The event was organized by the Central Asia Regional Environmental Center (CAREC) and Tashkent Professional College of Information Technologies (TPIC) with the support of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of Uzbekistan and the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan.

The strategic social project “Innovative Samsung Service Academy” is aimed at providing additional education for college students, assisting in solving the problems of youth employment, as well as promoting new standards in training qualified personnel for the service sector.

CAREC and the Environmental Movement of Uzbekistan, within the framework of the project, raise the awareness of teachers and students about "green" technologies, energy efficiency, resource saving and environmental approaches.

The second phase of the Samsung Innovation Service Academy project is being implemented during the period 2017-2018.

"It is symbolic that the results of this unique educational project for our country are being summed up in 2018, announced in Uzbekistan as a year of support for innovative ideas, technologies and active entrepreneurship,” Shakhnoza Umarova, the director of the CAREC Office in Uzbekistan, said. - Samsung Innovation Academy was created directly on the basis of the Tashkent Professional College of Information Technologies in 2015. And today it is an equipped complex, including a training class and two laboratories for teaching students the repair and maintenance of modern mobile devices and digital TVs. The project contributes to preparation of a new generation of graduates, ready for innovation and the development of "green" skills.

According to Saidrasul Sanginov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Central Kengash of the Eco-movement of Uzbekistan, the project showed how fruitful cooperation of public environmental organizations and educational institutions with business can be. Within the framework of the Memorandum of Cooperation, work was carried out to train young specialists in additional specialties in ICT, and the introduction of the section "Sustainable Development" into the Academy’s program was a good sign. He underlined that future specialists should be informed about environmental problems, ways of their solution and practice of nature protection activity in national and international contexts. The project is being implemented in parallel in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which opens up opportunities for the exchange of experience, effective solutions in the field of secondary specialized and vocational education, as well as best practices in IT technologies.

- TPIC became the first college in Uzbekistan, which began training specialists in repair and maintenance of mobile devices and digital TVs. In 2015-2016 two groups of third-year students and teachers took part in the experiment on development of two new professions. And in 2017, another 120 students of the college and teachers conducted approbation of the curricula, and the students made good progress in mastering new knowledge, which had not previously been taught at colleges in Uzbekistan. In the second phase of the project, the development of software for mobile devices is also included in the program, and we continue to develop further, consolidating our knowledge in the conditions of laboratory practice, Dmitry Li, the director of the TPIC’s academic department, said.

According to Berik Umarov, a representative of Samsung Electronics Central Eurasia, TPIC was selected as a pilot college by several criteria, one of which was the ability to transform and equip a certain part of the college territory immediately under two laboratories, as well as training audiences.

As of March 2018, it is planned to equip labs with necessary equipment and will strengthen potential opportunities for students. Berik Umarov said that the project was ready to share the methodical part, and invited everyone to participate in the planned technology contest, which will first be held at the national level in Uzbekistan, and then its winners will go to the contest in Kazakhstan.

Taking into account the importance of the sustainability of the results of the project, on 8 February, TPIC hosted a demo tour of the Samsung Innovation Academy, as well as trainings for profile colleges.