Fondation Rolf Schnyder
Education has been the throughline of our work since 2012, across eight countries, with a keen focus on Southeast Asia. Inclusion runs through all of it: school and healthcare access, child protection, and support for the children most often left out, including stateless children and children with disabilities. That work has reached tens of thousands of children and their families.
One of the newest of those needs is digital literacy — now a crucial skill for most future jobs. As computational thinking and AI reshape nearly every field a child might grow into, early digital literacy gives marginalized children a genuine chance at the opportunities ahead. This is the present chapter of Fondation Rolf Schnyder’s work, especially for children who would otherwise be left out of the digital economy.
Meeting that need means building capacity as well as providing resources, through a system that local institutions can own. At its center is Kids: Bits & Bytes™, our early childhood computer science and AI awareness curriculum, which teaches children to think computationally, solve problems, and navigate technology safely and with confidence. Around it, we build the rest: as a certified CodeAI Professional Learning Partner, we train and certify local teachers to bring it into their own classrooms, in partnership with local governments and universities, in alignment with Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) standards.
In Malaysia, this took shape through a 2022 tripartite MOU with the Sarawak Ministry of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development (KPWK) and Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak. The curriculum now reaches 107 SeDidik centres across Sarawak, delivered by the centres’ own teachers with sustained training behind them. One trained teacher reaches every child in her classroom, year after year.
In public education.
“Our ministry is committed that all children in Sarawak are equipped with digital literacy so that they are not left behind in the digitalization era.
For that, we are so grateful and thankful to Fondation Rolf Schnyder.”
YB Dato Sri Hajah Fatimah Abdullah
Minister, Ministry of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development (KPWK) Sarawak
Our story.
Fondation Rolf Schnyder was established in 2012 to honor the wish of the late Rolf W. Schnyder: to help those in need, “with priority to children, the future of our world.” Rolf had acquired the historic Swiss watchmaker Ulysse Nardin in 1983, when the company was in difficulty, and successfully revived and reinvented it. The Foundation was originally registered under Swiss law as Fondation Rolf Schnyder – Ulysse Nardin, adopting its current name in 2014.
His wife and our founder, Datin Chai Schnyder, who holds an MSc in Manufacturing Engineering, chaired the company Rolf had rebuilt for three years after he passed, while also establishing the Foundation. She has carried their shared vision forward ever since, built on a simple belief: “Let’s help as many people as possible get educated, to help them understand there is a future for them too.” That belief still guides our mission today.