Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives focused on providing equal opportunities in rural education and upgrading early science literacy operate as core pillars of global sustainable development goals. The “Curious Classrooms in the Village” project, a joint initiative executed by Bayer and KODA, validated its social performance metrics by securing double honors at the International CSR Excellence Awards 2026, an event benchmarked for global CSR elite frameworks.
Presented by The CSR Society—an independent, non-profit institution—these prestigious awards recognize outstanding international workflows across sustainability, social impact, and ethical business architectures. Designed to empower teachers working in village schools and multi-grade classroom settings, the training curriculum enables rural children to absorb scientific concepts through interactive experimentation, field observations, and active discovery workflows instead of traditional rote learning models.
Global Recognition Matched by Strong Domestic Traction
The systemic capacity expansion brought into the regional educational ecosystem by the "Curious Classrooms in the Village" framework had previously generated strong domestic validation across local rating platforms. In 2025, the project captured the "Equal Opportunity" prize at the Istanbul Marketing Awards and was simultaneously honored in the "Education" category at the Dünya Newspaper Social Benefit Awards.
Maintaining a global footprint with approximately 88,000 employees, 45.6 billion Euros in sales revenue, and an annual R&D investment of 5.8 billion Euros for the 2025 fiscal period, the life sciences conglomerate Bayer hooks its global "Health for All, Hunger for None" mission statement into local community developments. Concurrently, KODA, which has been engineering tailored rural training assets, pedagogical content, and data-driven advocacy tracks since 2016, drives a structural change model targeting the holistic development of rural youth.
Strategic Sourcing and Corporate Framework Insights
Reviewing the expansion runway of social investments and outlining pedagogical targets across rural learning nodes, the leadership teams shared the following statements:
Bayer Turkey Corporate Communications CSR Projects Leader Elif Ateş:
This success is a reflection of our belief as Bayer in the transformative power of science and our resolute stance toward generating social benefit. Through the strong collaboration we established with KODA, we aimed to create a lasting impact that strengthens the bond children form with science by supporting teachers in village schools. In the coming period, our primary objective is to expand the project's sphere of influence to support more children in connecting with science at an early age.
Village Schools Exchange Network (KODA) R&D Coordinator Gözde Polatkal:
A child's curiosity is not limited by the size of the place they live in. The 'Curious Classrooms in the Village' project set out precisely to demonstrate that the conditions to nurture this curiosity can be equally limitless. This award we received alongside Bayer encourages us further on our journey to transform science into an accessible and curiosity-awakening learning experience for children across every corner of Turkey.
