MABEL - Makers' Beloved

Learning Programming and electronics is like fighting on two fronts. Both fields, individually require a lot of time and effort to master. This can sometimes kill the appetite of learners especially when frustration sets in. MABEL is a teaching and learning platform designed by erictronics to make learning electronics, programming, and Micro-controllers easy. Mabel is equipped with sensors and experiments. Each experiment is carefully crafted to teach various aspects of programming and electronics. All you need is a computer to connect to Mabel. We also have a team dedicated to creating video tutorials for our YouTube channel. Currently, we have started a foundation called Tech Foundation Africa, and what we do is to reach out to people who are interested in learning Tech-related skills and train them for free and we have been using Mabel for our electronics sessions.

Africa is ranked as one of the continents with many problems. However, most of our problems can be remedied through the application of Science and Technology. Unfortunately, due to the lack of understanding of science and its applications in real-life situations, we are unable to apply scientific solutions to our problems and the very few who are doing well in these fields are mostly males. I get opportunities to organize tech-related skill training programs and workshops and, my observation is that the appetite of the women in for these things is very low. In all my free and paid IT training workshops, ladies are always of the lowest attendance. In a workshop at the College of Science, KNUST, that I happened to facilitate Web design, I had only 3 ladies attending the workshop. Therefore, in as much as we want to have more women occupying places of prominence, I think most of them are not making the effort and employers will always employ people with the skills not because of their gender.

TECH FOUNDATION AFRICA has designed an intervention strategy to help our women become technologically inclined. We are providing affordable practical training with a focus on the practical applications of science, mathematics, and technology in everyday life using our MABEL learning platform. Our goal is to make as many women as we can innovators or inventors and equally qualified for positions held by their male counterparts.

Our solution targets the Youth of Africa as a whole with more emphasis on women. In our workshops and training programs, we move at the speed of the slowest person in the audience. On several occasions, we have given our MABEL platform for free to the most punctual and serious ladies who attend the program, and for others, we have reduced the price by as much as 50%.

Our teaching and learning platform and upgrades that we are currently considering will help whet the appetite of women in the learning of programming and electronics which will give them the skill to innovate and create, to be players in science and technology. The skills they will gain will help them stand as front-liners in these fields and will also serve as a means of attracting other females into the field. Limor Fried of Adafruits for instance inspires me a lot and I learn a lot from her.

From my experience in teaching basic electronics and programming, I have realized that most people with a passion for electronics get scared by programming and those with a passion for the programming get scared by the electronics. Our solution takes away this fear by making it fun to do both electronics and programming or either at the convenience of the learner.

The core technologies that power our solution are micro-controllers such as ATMega328, Arduino development board.

Our solution is currently known to some departments of universities and people in Ghana. We have had training sessions with the Physics Students Association of Ghana (PHYSAG), KNUST chapter, the Robotics Team of the University of Renewable and Natural resources, Ghana, Computer Science Society of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST and many individuals who have attended our physical and virtual training programs.
Attached is a link to a slide-based video of one of our training programs.

Learning a skill is greatly influenced by a person's passion, interest, and motivation. When I started learning programming in 2008, the only thing that made me successful was my ability to see it as fun despite all the challenges of not having a computer, no internet access, financial constraints, and many more. Most of the people I get in touch with get motivated to start but along the line, most of them lose interest due to their inability to understand certain technicalities. Our solution makes learning electronics and programming fun by eliminating, especially, the need to know how to build a circuit before learning how to program them for those who are only interested in the programming and to those who are interested in electronics, it gives them a fast way to see how codes can make electronics much interesting.

Currently, we have been able to reach out to over 500 people as a result of the programs we did with some departments in universities in Ghana and also via our virtual training programs. Given the necessary funding and resources, the number of people we can reach out to the World

Our next version of the MABEL will have real-time networking capabilities which will make it possible for students to collaborate in learning and also give our carefully selected supervisors the ability to interact with learners and give them help creating something like a 24/7 global network of learners. This will help us reach many people at a time all over the world and also help us monitor and measure the performance of our students in real-time without any geographic barriers.

The challenges we face currently are mostly due to funding and resources. There is a little we can do from our own pockets, and since we have to put the money back from where it was taken, we are unable to make the program as free and all-inclusive as we want it to be, which is a way defeats the purpose of our work.

We intend to seek for grants and funding as much as possible and once the system is up, we can monetize through subscription and partnership.

5 Full-time staff

Our team consists of graduates who share in the need to promote tech-literacy. We are a team of dedicated tech enthusiasts who love what they do and are great at it. At least, I can say with much confidence, that the team has stood by me even when we are not making any returns on our effort. That is is the kind of passion and dedication that moves mountains.

The focus of our business model is to encourage as many youths, especially young ladies and women to develop a passion for Technology. This is because we firmly believe that technology holds the key solution to Africa’s many problems. To achieve our aim, our Business Model involves raising revenue through fees paid by participants to our training sessions. Currently, to encourage more women and girls to benefit from our training program, we have provided a 50% discount on fees to those within the category. Also, proceeds from the lease of our Mabel Platform to our institutional partners is one of our main sources of revenue. Our targeted partners are tertiary institutions and high schools within our target market. Along these main streams of revenue, we can make an impact on the lives of women and girls who have an interest in the use of technology to solve our local problems. By creating an exciting learning experience for participants of our program, we can provide value for their investments in ICT knowledge.  We are hopeful that very soon the world will experience a surge in African inventors, possibly with more women in the limelight.
We keep operational costs at the barest minimum. The main operational expenditure includes wages, internet charges, and utility bills, and transportation costs. 

We envision to be the leading source of IT education in Africa. Sound financial stability is crucial to achieving our goal. While our current sources of revenue can only provide sufficient cover for our operational expenses, our long term financial plan entails a combination of donations and grants as well as venture capital fund as last resort. Our financial strategy is to identify local and multinational corporations with an interest in promoting the learning of IT in Africa. Our appealing projects in IT will appeal to them and ultimately sign us on their Corporate Social Responsibility Programs. Further, we would raise revenue from the sale of projects to specific institutions that may need our inventions to make their work easier.
With sound financial management and controls already implemented, we have positioned ourselves on the front seat for donations and grants. Our judicious use of funds has made it possible to retain our dedicated staff for the past two years. 

Our passion and dedication to make the world a better place by helping to make many women "tech-literate" has driven us into developing our learning platform, MABEL, and also our year-round free training programs which unfortunately was stopped by the pandemic. Our main challenge is funding for the things we do. We often come across women with the passion and hunger to learn the skills we teach but are constrained financially to participate although we try as much as possible to make things relatively cheaper and sometimes free. Funding from Solve will help us provide free services for those who are genuinely not capable of paying for the platform so that no one will be left behind.

We look forward to partners with the ability to help us finance our projects and programs and also the required resources to manufacture our teaching and learning kits.

Our solution to help train women in the field of technology would require that our team members are well-endowed in the field of science and technology. Partnership with MIT's computer science and engineering faculty will help us get the knowledge required for this task. Also, partnerships with companies like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Digikey, Texas Instruments, and any PCB development company like JLCPCB would be great for the engineering side of our work.

My team is dedicated to training as many women in tech-related skills. This will help sharpen the skill of women and help them build enough confidence to be partakers of problem-solving in the tech industry. Through our work, we would have the likes of Limor Fried to help make the world a better place.

My team is dedicated to training as many women in tech-related skills. This will help sharpen the skill of women and help them build enough confidence to be partakers of problem-solving in the tech industry. Through our work, we would have the likes of Limor Fried to help make the world a better place.

My team is dedicated to training as many women in tech-related skills. This will help sharpen the skill of women and help them build enough confidence to be partakers of problem-solving in the tech industry. Through our work, we would have the likes of Limor Fried to help make the world a better place.