Today, the signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding establishing a TUMO center in Berlin took place at TUMO Yerevan and the Berlin headquarters of KfW Development Bank.
In October 2020, TUMO Berlin will open its doors in Charlottenburg, a historic community in western Berlin, providing a tuition-free education to 1,200 students.
The event was attended by government officials of the Republic of Armenia and the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the heads of the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies and KfW Development Bank.
Welcoming those in attendance, Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan said, “Today’s event proves that a country’s geographic location or the richness of its natural resources does not determine its future. Rather, it is a country’s human potential and the richness of its ideas, which have no boundary.”
The establishment of a TUMO center in Berlin was spearheaded by the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in tandem with KfW Development Bank.
As Dr. Ingrid Hengster, a member of KfW’s executive board, stated in her address, “Promoting education is one of KfW’s central priorities. With TUMO, we are adopting an innovative project, from a country that KfW also cooperates with in development, to promote the digital education of children. This is exciting, because only if we learn from each other, can we truly be successful in the digital age. I, therefore, hope that we will find many more partners for this project in Germany.”
Students at TUMO Berlin will focus on several learning targets: programming, animation, filmmaking, graphic design, 3D modeling, game development, music, drawing, photography and robotics.
Speaking about the specifics of TUMO’s unique curriculum, TUMO CEO Marie Lou Papazian emphasized that, “The educational program that KfW and TUMO are launching in Berlin is an ambitious one. It will cover some of the fastest-growing fields in technology and design such as artificial intelligence, computational graphics, algorithmic music and include numerous opportunities to explore and prepare for future careers.”
TUMO Berlin will join TUMO’s growing network of international centers such as TUMO Paris and Beirut. Plans to establish new centers in Moscow, Tirana, Tokyo and other cities around the world are in progress.