The KONE Corporation Centennial Foundation was founded in 2010 to celebrate KONE’s pioneering 100 years in the elevator and escalator business. The foundation’s mission is to advance and support developmental, educational, and cultural activities for children and young people around the world.
The foundation’s first project is the funding of a mobile library to encourage reading among school-age children in China. To be launched in 2011, the library will carry thousands of children’s books and be equipped for tutoring, teaching support, after-school reading clubs, and other related activities.
The mobile library will be operated in cooperation with the Beijing Times newspaper and will primarily serve schools for migrant children in 10 cities in eastern and southern China. These schools typically lack libraries or reading rooms of their own. The mobile library will benefit from expertise provided by Finnish library professionals. Our employees and volunteers recruited by the Beijing Times will help with support activities such as the collection of books to be left in reading rooms created in the schools visited by the mobile library. In addition to the acquisition and conversion of the vehicle, the KONE Corporation Centennial Foundation’s grant includes the cost of books, equipment, librarian and driver training and salary, as well as insurance and maintenance.