DaDa "companionship", driven by technology and social welfare, gives DaDa a brand upgrade

Five years after its launch, DaDa is now fully prepared to take a step towards another milestone. At the same time, DaDa has embraced its corporate social responsibility by investing in social welfare, particularly in healthcare for women and children. Together with United Foundation for China's Health (UFCH), DaDa jointly launched the "to be with you" welfare program, aimed at improving the status of women and children's well-being through the concept of "companionship", which will benefit tens of thousands of mothers and children along with multiple families. It's the first documented case in China in which a welfare program is jointly launched by a leading online education platform and a well-known international healthcare brand.

ZHI Hui, DaDa's founder and CEO, and Roberta Lipson, founder, and chairman of United Family Healthcare, and ZHAO Xi, Chairman of United Foundation for China's Health (UFCH) along with their senior management teams attended the event. More than 200 journalists were present. ZHANG Quanling, the famous former CCTV anchor who has also chosen DaDa for her children, hosted the event, and shared her feelings about education and social welfare.

"Companionship " forms the core of the future of education

Based on the newly integrated brand core value "companionship", DaDa has modified its logo accordingly. According to Ms ZHI, the English version of the logo has been simplified down to only "DaDa", which is normally a baby's first words, symbolizing the baby's initial awareness, and its genuine curiosity of the world. The logo also skillfully combines the two letters "D" and "a" into a complete word, which implies mutual tolerance, understanding, and trust, and reflects the attributes of DaDa's unique one-on-one teaching model which assigns a teacher exclusively to one student.

Acknowledging companionship as the most important educational concept comes from long-term contact with the parents of tens of thousands of students DaDa has served in the past five years, as well as from educational research results based on large-scale research. It shows that during the early ages, a sense of security plays an important role in developing self-cognition and self-esteem. However, in today's China, at a time when the pace of life is accelerating, and social relations are gradually diminishing, companionship is becoming increasingly scarce and precious. The emphasis on companionship reflects what DaDa believes in, and what the company is aiming for. In fact, sticking to exclusive learning model has been one key principle that DaDa insists on. From the beginning, this learning model has shown a significant advantage by enabling a stable relationship between teachers and students, which has resulted in a positive impact on learning. The effectiveness of DaDa's learning model has also been proved by the year-on-year increase in student numbers.

Branding experts stated that the brand upgrade event shows that the concept of "companionship" has become DaDa's main strategy. This shows not only the unification of the goals within DaDa, but also an important commitment to consumers and the market.

AI empowers English learning, continuously improving user experience and teaching quality

At the conference, DaDa showed the public two of its advanced technologies for the online classroom: immersive live interactive classroom, and facial expression recognition system based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology and big data.

According to experts, immersive live interactive classroom technology allows students to see teachers in real time, with the virtual scene precisely matching the classroom environment, making the training session more lively. By applying this technology to the online classroom, it not only enhances the interest of students, but also virtually improves students' practical English skills. And by capturing students' facial expressions in real time, the facial expression recognition system plays an important role in collecting feedback from students during the lesson to assist the teachers while providing a credible indicator for parents to evaluate the effectiveness of their children's lessons.

"From branding, and technology to products, this is an all-round upgrade. Integrating companionship into education is our ultimate goal", Ms ZHI said. "These years have witnessed DaDa's continuously increasing number of users. We are grateful for the trust and support. Investing in technology to improve user experience and teaching quality shows our commitment to our users", she added.

Cross-field charitable program officially initiated to help mothers and the children in poor areas

What also deserves special mention from the event is that DaDa and United Family Healthcare announced the launch of a charity program, "To be with you". By putting "mother" as the starting point of the program, and expanding towards children living in impoverished areas, offering comprehensive support with medical treatment and education will enable the less privileged to live their lives with dignity. At present China's public welfare efforts are generally half-hearted, and usually out of touch with reality. For example, many charity projects provide simple physical gifts to meet the basic needs of underprivileged children, without providing a lasting solution. In reality, the "occasional" charitable action on an impulse can be a form of harm to recipients. Therefore, it is also hoped that DaDa's philanthropic actions, based on the value of long-term companionship, can serve as an example to the public.

According to reports, the "To be with you" social welfare program covers three basic projects: basic skills training for emergency recovery, two forms of cancer screening for mothers in impoverished areas, and surgical relief for orphans and handicapped children. With the support of United Family Healthcare's medical vehicles, this charity program will spread across the country, delivering medical care to orphans and disabled children in urban communities. It will provide free routine medical and physical examinations as well as medical training and basic medical care knowledge to nursing staff, such as BLS (Basic Lifesaving Techniques) and oral health protection, etc. It will also offer women in remote areas such as Yunnan and Ningxia cancer screening, dental examination, and surgical assistance to orphans and disabled children in remote and impoverished areas. To complement this, DaDa will provide children with online learning and language training support. It is estimated that more than a thousand families and tens of thousands of people stand to benefit from this program.

Through cooperation with the United Foundation for China's Health (UFCH), DaDa's goal is to disseminate quality education and medical resources to a wider demographic. Additionally, the "medical + education" approach will help certain groups of people achieve healthy, sustainable physical and mental development. All this will make the effects of the charity initiative more rewarding and long-lasting for the recipients.

"This is the first cross-field attempt by UFCH and the education sector. Both education and medical care have extremely strong social attributes. Collaborating together, we can not only provide assistance to the people in need, but also hope to become a positive demonstration to the domain of public welfare" said Roberta Lipson, founder of UFCH and CEO/founder of United Family Healthcare.

When talking about this collaboration, Ms ZHI was very excited. "The idea of getting involved in social welfare started very early at DaDa. We took a long time to select this initiative as we hope that what we do can bring a real and long-term impact to the public, and satisfy parents' and students' fundamental needs. For us, combining education with social welfare is just the beginning", she said.

About DaDa   

DaDa is a professional organization specializing in K12 online English education. After years of development, DaDa has formed key advantages, including research, a network of foreign teachers in Europe and the United States, a fixed one-on-one teaching model, a graded curriculum, diversified course categories, and fully functional coverage of mobile terminals. Its "100% Transparent Classroom" system allows parents to monitor their children's learning using mobile devices anytime, anywhere, and achieve efficient, convenient and personalized home-school collaboration.

DaDa is committed to building an "international school without walls", and always adheres to the teaching-oriented principle, through the establishment of Brain Spark. By collaborating with the Highlights Press, McGraw-Hill Education, and FLTRP, they can import qualified teaching content such as PLE, Reach, Highlights, and a number of authoritative tutorials (including electronic versions), and training and evaluating systems. DaDa maintains parity with schools from domestic 1st tier cities as well as private schools from Hong Kong in terms of teaching resources.

In 2015, DaDa obtained round A financing from Dragon Capital, Pegasus Fund, and Qingsong Fund. In 2016, DaDa gained hundreds of millions of yuan in round B funding from Yonghua Capital. In December of the same year, it also raised a few hundred million yuan in round B+ financing led primarily by Oriental Fortune Capital. Among them, Yonghua Capital ranked third place in terms of the most IPO exits of domestic VC/PE institutions in the first half of 2017, and the total amount of funds managed by the Oriental Fortune Capital exceeded RMB 20 billion. In January 2018, DaDa gained 100 million U.S. dollars in round C financing, jointly invested by the world-famous hedge fund, "The Tiger Fund", and the domestic education giant, the TAL Education Group, becoming one of the industry's invisible unicorns.

About United Foundation for China's Health (UFCH)

UFCH has provided medical assistance in various regions of China since 2001, focusing on maternal and child health, disease relief, and capacity enhancement. UFCH takes its corporate social responsibility on behalf of United Family Healthcare (UFH). UFH is the largest donor to the foundation and contributes 1% of its annual income to help orphans, disabled children, and the disadvantaged within China. UFCH provides medical assistance and surgical treatment to improve their living quality, and help them back on the normal track.

The medical vehicle is a mobile clinic of the UFCH. Since beginning operations in November 2015, these medical vehicles have been deeply involved in the community providing the "last mile" medical services to orphans, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the poor. Currently, the vehicles have traveled more than 10,000 kilometers. With the support of the foundation, in 2017 the medical vehicle project received a total of 2,149 outpatients, 136 in-patients, and conducted 62 surgical operations.

In January 2018, the Department of Chinese Civil Affairs officially approved the registration of the UFCH as a privately funded charitable organization. The core value "Cure to carry hope" is the ultimate goal which UFCH has always pursued.

SOURCE DaDa