Social/Economic

In 2019, Epson Europe B.V. launched New Horizons, an education program that reaches 10,000 youth in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This program leverages Epson's storehouse of technology and expertise to draw out the creative potential of youngsters and elevate their understanding of sustainability.

In 2020, the spread of COVID-19 made it necessary to alter the initial action plan and take most of the activities online. Still, Epson Europe's Sustainability Manager developed and delivered a presentation on sustainability to a total of 4,684 middle school, high school, and university students in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain. In Italy, moreover, a discussion was held with 480 teachers on creating a more sustainable future. In addition to providing a chance to think about the management and the responsibility of corporations, it was an excellent opportunity to find out what the younger generation thinks about environmental problems and their own roles therein, as well as to learn what they expect of corporations.

Epson India Pvt. Ltd. (EPIL) believes in the importance of future childhood education and has an assistance program that focuses on underprivileged children. Over the past several years, EPIL has been distributing books, notebooks, and backpacks to public schools that serve underprivileged children primarily in the states of Karnataka, in southwest India where EPIL is located, and in the western state of Maharashtra. The number of recipient schools has been increasing by the year. The children were happy with their new gear that helped with their studies.

The apparel industry is faced with losses due to the disposal of a large amount of unsold products and environmental problems due to the large amount of water used in the dyeing process. Digital textile printing is a sustainable printing process that reduces environmental impacts, accommodates quick turnaround times, enables short-run production, and improves the working environment.

In the 2020 school year, Epson supported the production of digitally printed fashion pieces by graduating students of Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo. This provided students who will lead the fashion industry in the future and are interested in the societal issues facing the apparel industry with an opportunity to learn about digital textile printing and experience its value first-hand. In the process of completing their fashion pieces, the students saw for themselves the outstanding reproducibility of their designs and the environmental benefits of a printing process that uses a minimal amount of water. The teachers and students were extremely satisfied with the photo-quality reproduction. This was more than just a printing experience for the students. They also learned about digital printing and took advantage of its features in the creation of their pieces, thus taking a step forward toward creating a new form of clothing design in the future.

Seiko Epson traces its roots to Daiwa Kogyo, a watch factory. Over the decades, we have developed world-class watch manufacturing technology and have master watchmakers (human capital).

We create opportunities at which people can experience the fun and lure of monozukuri, by holding local events and watch assembly classes for elementary and junior high school students. At a class held at Meizen Junior High School in Matsumoto City in September 2020, the students were asked to assemble tiny watch parts into a watch case, a task that demands perseverance and concentration. They caught a glimpse of the level of difficulty watchmaking entails, experienced the satisfaction of building their own timepiece, and gained a greater understanding of local industry.

The Epson International Scholarship Foundation provides scholarship assistance to outstanding students from abroad who wish to study in Japan and to students from Japan who wish to study abroad. Scholarships provide ambitious university students with the extra support they need to study abroad. This is especially important now since the pandemic has made it more difficult than ever for students to earn enough to live on.

The Foundation also hosts events to promote social interaction, but these have been held online for the past two years due to COVID-19. (The photo shows the 2022 ceremony for new scholarship recipients.)
The year 2022 marks the 25th year since the Foundation was established. To date, it has provided scholarships to 286 students, and scholarship alumni are making an impact in many different areas in countries around the world.

Among other things, the Foundation also provides subsidies for research conducted by young researchers in engineering fields and for participation in international exchange programs.

Our society is increasingly built around information. To meet the needs of changing times, we established the Epson Information Science Vocational School in 1989. Its purpose is to develop technical personnel who are trusted by the community and can make wide-ranging contributions to society. The school had 2,883 graduates as of March 2022.

Most of the instructors are engineers and developers who have corporate experience, including at Epson. Classes are designed to ensure that students acquire technical skills they can put to practical use on the job. As a result of the school's efforts, at least 95% of the students in each graduating class over the 30 years since the school first opened its doors have received informal employment offers before graduation. Moreover, 100% of the students in the class graduating in March 2022 had received offers.

Students have their choice of three disciplines: Information Systems, Information and Electronic Systems, and Information Business. The school is accredited by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Moreover, MEXT recognizes all three disciplines as Professional Post-Secondary Courses1. A special class has also been set up to enable the top students to join Epson on school recommendation after graduation.

In February 2020, we received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award, an award granted to the highest achieving companies and schools in Japan in a Digital Technology Certification test2. Only two organizations, our school and another one, won the group award, meaning that the efforts of our students earned recognition nationwide.

Seiko Epson helped to support the inaugural Suwako 8Peaks Middle Triathlon, held in June 2022. The race took place along a 100 km course in and around Lake Suwa and out to the base of Mt. Yatsugatake. Seiko Epson, together with the event organizing committee, co-created and developed a global positioning system that utilized sensing technology to enable the organizers to see the location and movements of all 752 athletes in real time in order to ensure their safety.

Epson Deutschland GmbH (EDG) has been running its "190 Days of Social Commitment" program since 2008. The program began when 190 EDG employees each took one day of paid leave at their own convenience to serve the community by volunteering their time at social welfare facilities or schools in the area around the Meerbusch office. EDG changed the name to "290 Days of Social Commitment" in FY2017 because the number of employees had increased to 290.

In FY2020-21, volunteer activities became all but impossible due to the pandemic, so EDG found new ways to give back to society, including by donating laptop PCs to children in need so that they could learn from home and by supporting the creation and publication of magazines at nursing homes.

Seiko Epson helps to stimulate the local economy and community by serving, since 1956, as a sponsor of the annual Lake Suwa Fireworks Festival, held in the city of Suwa, Nagano prefecture, where the company is headquartered. An incredible 40,000 fireworks explode over the lake, their sound reverberating off the surrounding hills. The display ends with a cascade of sparkles along a two-kilometer stretch of the lake. This festival, one of the largest in Japan, is a local summer tradition that attracts some 500,000 visitors.

Seiko Epson has continuously served as a special corporate sponsor of the annual Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival (originally the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto) since its inception, in 1992. The festival was organized to promote music and the arts as well as to contribute to the education and development of youth. (In 2020 and 2021, the festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

In addition to regular concerts during the festival's run, there will be special events geared toward children, including musicales and an opera. To date, invitations have been extended to 13,000 sixth-graders, seventh-graders, and to schools for the deaf, blind, and disabled in Nagano prefecture. This education program provides a valuable opportunity for the children to see young musicians perform and to hear live orchestra music, thus serving as a catalyst for interest in classical music.