Digital Literacy in Kakuma Refugee Camp

Our project addresses a major challenge in refugee camps which is access to quality education for women and girls. Digital Literacy in Kakuma Refugee Camp is a program that empowers girls between ages 16-24 years with digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills and knowledge.This is achieved via use of  a learning management system (moodle) which has great features to support online learning and virtual mentorship. The program uses a Snowballing technique to ensure skills transfer from the trained girls to as many girls as possible within the camp. 

At the end of the program, the girls are expected to attain valuable skills to increase their employment opportunities or enable them to  start sustainable business ventures ultimately improving theirs and their communities’ economic conditions and livelihoods.

Once successfully implemented, the model can be replicated to other refugee camps in the world leading to access to quality education, reduced poverty and inequality.

Globally, women and girls in refugee camps face a myriad of social and economic challenges. Access to quality education challenge has been attributed to scarce resources, cultural and social practices which discourage women and girls from pursuing formal education. Further, COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation due to closure of schools, ban of public gatherings and social distancing regulations. The situation is not any different in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.

UNHCR reports nearly 25.9 million refugees - 50% are below the age of 18. As of February 29 2020, Kenya reported 492,802 refugees and asylum seekers. The Kakuma Refugee Camp has 194,914 refugees, 91,321 being women. 29% of the women are between the ages of 18 to 35 years. In addition to existing challenges of access, COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed most initiatives geared towards Education. By leveraging the available digital infrastructure at Kakuma, especially computer equipped vocational centres, mobile technology and internet, ICT can be used to address the gaping need for quality education for women and girls. Through ICT, we can deliver content on digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills and virtual mentoring to 750 women and girls (16 to 24 years), through a phased snowball approach.

As part of a continuing project named: Refugee Employment: Enhancing Affordable Accessibility of Education in Refugee Camps, @iLabAfrica, Strathmore University is providing packaged digital ICT learning content for learners, online training (e-learning) and mentorship for young women and girls based in Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya. The aim is to introduce and increase ICT, digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills amongst this population. Our focus is on young women aged between the ages of 16-24 years.

The e-learning content is packaged as basic, intermediate and advanced computer skills. The training is conducted through vocational learning centres which we have identified and are equipped with computers at the camps. Online training is conducted where the learners are trained on particular topics and given follow up assignments. This is made possible through Moodle Learning Management System and BigBlueButton web conferencing facilities that provide live interaction between the trainer and the learners. Tutors are available physically to support the young women with the trainers’ instructions online. Mentorship is a key factor in this process where the girls are paired up with @iLabAfrica employees who give guidance on topics such as how to make it in the IT industry as a woman.

Through this project we target girls from refugee and host communities in and around Kakuma Refugee Camp. The target age group is 16 - 24 years and this will consist of both school going as well as out of school girls. Through our solution, we envision exposing these girls to future opportunities for work which exist online through training on ICT, Digital Literacy and Entrepreneurship skills. 

The program also includes a component of mentoring where girls will receive guidance on how to make a living through leveraging on digital tools. In the pilot program where we delivered learning via web conferencing, we discovered a huge disparity in the distribution of men versus women enrolled in the course. 

It is for this reason that we propose a program targeted specifically at girls because we recognise that women are disproportionately underrepresented in such programs. We anticipate that through this project we will increase the number of women and girls who are exposed to work opportunities presented by ICT tools

The effect on education in hard to reach areas like refugee camps has been devastating. Women and girls are more affected. UNHCR reports 19.8% of the population in Kakuma are women between the ages of 18–59years. Most of these women do not get access to formal education due to cultural and social practices. Our solution addresses the challenge that marginalized girls and women face in  accessing quality learning opportunities to succeed  by adopting technology to deliver educational opportunities to women and girls of ages 16-24years in Kakuma. This will be done through e-learning on ICT, Digital Literacy and Entrepreneurship skills.

• A blended learning (online and face-to-face) approach to revolutionise learning will be used.
• A Snowballing technique will also be used to teach ICT skills to a representative number of girls who will be trained, and thereafter they will be tasked with the responsibility of cascading this knowledge to as many girls as possible. This will ensure that the girls are computer savvy so as to allow them to make effective use of the technologies which will be used to deliver learning content. On completion of this training of ICT skills phase, learners will then be able to use the technologies we will introduce in the camps to reinforce learning. Learning material shall be availed via eLearning. Content shall be packaged and in the form of recorded videos which are integrated with content of different formats. This will improve the overall quality of education provided in camps.
• Mobile learning via a personal handheld electronic device, such as a smartphone will be used. According to a recent survey done by Samuel Hall in 2018 on a sample size of 696 refugees in Kakuma on level of mobile phone access it was found that mobile device ownership was high at 96%. 
• Opportunity for incubation. Our incubation centre has experts who take the participants through one on one business coaching and mentoring sessions to guide them on how to develop good business solutions, financial modelling, market and pitch. The incubation centre experts will also create a platform to connect great ideas to angel investors.

Our solution is an eLearning platform based on Moodle. Moodle is an open source Learning Management System (LMS) that is highly customizable, with a host of great features which can be leveraged to support online learning. All the content created for the project will be hosted on Moodle and the end users would be able to access the materials either using a computer through a web browser and mobile devices through either a web browser or mobile app. We will work with the network of vocational training centres with computer labs within Kakuma to ensure that the girls involved in the program can access the material. In order to support live online learning, we will integrate an online web conferencing plugin called BigBlueButton. This has several integrations of popular LMSs, which include Moodle. With this in place, we will be able to carry out virtual mentoring sessions between the beneficiaries of the program and mentors at @iLabAfrica, Strathmore University.

Within each of the computer centres, we will deploy a content distribution server which runs an instance of Moodle. That way, we allow for offline access of the material hosted on that server even when there is no Internet connection. We will periodically update the material on these servers when access to the Internet is established.

Our solution will rely on available digital infrastructure specifically vocational training centres with electricity and internet connected computers, and mobile technology. A 2018 report by Samuel Hall on innovative mobile solutions for refugees in East Africa confirms over 72% of refugees in Kakuma have access to 3G connectivity. They report access to mobile devices as universal standing at 96% in Kakuma. Safaricom, the leading mobile telephony services provider has a more stable network at Kakuma, with kiosks offering air-time top-ups, mobile money transfer and other services. Also, over 46% of refugees have access to Smartphones (almost complete gender parity in access), with WhatsApp being one of the most used applications by the younger population. This provides the opportunity to deliver the program to participants at home in case of movement restrictions.

Kakuma is home to over 6 vocational training centres. Don Bosco Vocational Training Center, Saint Clare Training Institute Kakuma, St. Clare Training Institute and AMREC Training Institute Kakuma Campus are reported to be most resourced in terms of ICT. Our solution will use Moodle, a globally recognized web-based and open source learning and course management platform that is highly flexible, user-friendly and feature-rich. BigBlueButton, a web-based open source conferencing tool, will support scheduling, content sharing and online delivery of our program. An integration of Moodle and BigBlueButton functionality can run in a network bandwidth of at least 5mbps to deliver instructor led training anytime, anywhere at any pace.

According to UNHCR (2020) statistics Kenya currently hosts 492,802 refugees, making it the 10th largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the 4th largest in Africa, following Uganda, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Most of the refugees hosted in Kenya are concentrated in three main locations: the Dadaab camp, the Kakuma camp, and Nairobi. The refugees participate in various economic activities such as self employment and employment (e.g by UNHCR and its partner NGOs) in order to earn a living in the camps. Employment however is not guaranteed as most of the refugees are not skilled and rely on their family, friends and the local community to obtain employment.

According to a report by UNHCR (Education Strategy-Kakuma Refugee Camp- 2017), female students only constitute 22% of the overall enrolment in secondary school and 57% of the teachers are untrained. 94% of eligible secondary school aged children are out of school and 87% of those enrolled are over-aged.

Girls are the first to be pulled back from school in order to help with family chores such as cleaning, cooking, childcare or enter into early marriages. For those who make it to school, when they come home, they have to leave their schoolwork and attend to family obligations, while the boys continue to study.

ICT has numerous opportunities to explore for further education and advancement of the girls and young women in these camps. It is said that if you empower a girl you empower a community. This is because once empowered, women reap back these benefits to their homes and in turn the society gains from this.

ICT knowledge will increase the girls’ creativity and confidence hence opening up new opportunities. For example, they can open online businesses or even apply for remote jobs, create new apps and explore the numerous opportunities available on the internet.

The incorporation of mentors, including women from refugee backgrounds who have made it in the ICT field, during these training sessions help open up the minds of the girls showing them how they too can make it.

Our solution is part of a continuing project that involved the set up of a digital learning centre at Kakuma Refugee camp that served 24 students (23 male and 1 female). With the help of our partners, we look to focus particularly on enrolling 150 girls and young women between the ages of 16 to 24 years of age in one year’s time. In five years time, we look to have served 750 girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 24 years.

Year One Goals:

1. To ensure that girls and young women have improved accessibility to education
2. To have more affordable education. Distance-learning programmes are cost effective solutions especially in situations where refugees cannot move to another city to pursue their studies.

Within the next five years, our goal is to ensure:

1. More job acquisition and/or self-employment due to skills development through acquisition of digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills. Advanced training will enable those living in refugee camps to use their skills to make a living through activities such as designing websites, developing software and e-commerce applications, as well as proposal writing.
2. Transformed personal lives and increased possibilities of meaningful livelihood.
3. Improved possibility for further studies locally and internationally. Introduction of courses taught at Strathmore University will encourage students at Secondary level to aim higher and seek opportunities to pursue higher education. For each of the courses, the idea is to train up to 150 students each year. This translates to 750 graduates trained in the proposed courses in a span of five years.
4. Improved capacity to provide better quality education due to train-the-trainer approach.
5. To scale the program model to host communities and other refugee camps.
6. Through the program, we hope to offer important insights into the ‘gender gap’ and the indispensable link between schooling and employment, with implications for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (and their ‘leave no one behind’ principle) and the integration of refugees into national development plans.

Financial barriers:

In Year 1: We require USD 100,000 to implement the objectives of the program effectively and efficiently for a period of 3 years, with the goal of improving the digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills of 750 women and girls at Kakuma, ultimately improving their economic conditions and livelihoods. By Year 5: We expect little financial barriers as we will have gained sustained donations and grants.

Technical barriers:

In Year 1, the challenges of unstable internet and low turnout and commitment from the participants are expected. By Year 5, we expect little technical barriers, as we will have built sustainable relations with key program stakeholders.

 Cultural barriers:

In Year 1: At the beginning of the program, we expect some resistance to adoption of our program resulting from social and cultural barriers that discourage women and girls from pursuing formal education. Conflict between the host community and the refugees could cause unsolicited constraints on our program. By year 5, the unforeseen negative impact of conflicts between the host community and the camp might hit again.

Financial barriers

The financial barriers will be addressed through creating a target for fundraising amount for at least USD 30,000 for each year and achieving it. This will be achieved through a combination of methods such as sourcing from grant funding, collaborations with corporate partners, donations, among other methods.

 Technical barriers

Technical barriers of unstable internet will be addressed through leveraging on already established partnerships with Internet Service Providers such as Safaricom, Airtel-Telkom. The partnership will involve an agreement of a win-win situation where both parties are to see the benefits of the sponsorship in one way or another. We will also propose this as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

 Cultural barriers

Cultural barriers may be experienced in the first year. We aim to approach this by engaging with some of the community leaders and encouraging them to talk to the girls’ parents. We will be involved in these conversations and will be available to explain the need to have the girls take up extra hours in the day to attend this program. In 5 years’ time most of the girls will have seen the benefits of the program. We therefore anticipate voluntary enrollment in the 2nd and consequent 3rd, 4th and 5th years.

Our team represents Strathmore University, a private university in Kenya. The team works at @iLabAfrica, a research and innovation centre. The solution was developed as part of the work @iLabAfrica has been doing in developing innovative solutions to everyday problems, and in this case leveraging technology to provide quality education.

Our team comprises 10 full time staff that include; 1 technical advisor, 1 team lead, 3 project managers, 3 project coordinators and 2 researchers.

Our team is composed of an interdisciplinary mix of project managers, project coordinators and researchers. Each team member has obtained an Undergraduate and master’s degree in a computer science and/or business-related field. One of our team members has a PhD while one is in the process of attaining their Doctorate. 

The team has worked on similar kinds of projects involving youth (with a focus on marginalized women and girls) and ICT such as; the Google RISE project, Holiday Boot Camp for teens, Girls in ICT Day commemorative bootcamps, Google Computer Science training for Teachers, Online Training of refugees on Accountancy via web conferencing, Barclays ReadytoWork Digital Learning Program among others. Each team member has expertise on project planning, training and mentorship. As part of Strathmore University community, @iLabAfrica has access to subject matter experts in ICT, entrepreneurship, finance and accounting, law, engineering, and social sciences. 

An important component of our solution is entrepreneurship. @iLabAfrica also runs a Business Incubator (@iBizAfrica) that supports over 400 startups, with proven expertise on business coaching, mentorship and reliable investor fund networks.

We have worked closely with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Windle Trust Kenya (WTK) in delivering the pilot program on training on Accountancy via Web Conferencing. We worked through a tripartite agreement where the UNHCR funded the project, Windle Trust Kenya implemented the project in Kakuma and Strathmore University conducted the actual training and liaised with Kasneb, the accountancy examining body. Through this collaboration, each partner ensured that the project ran smoothly from the perspective of their responsibilities. 

WTK, which has a field office in Kakuma, managed the day to day aspects of the project such as managing the computer infrastructure so that learning continued seamlessly, ensuring that students received their stipends, assignments were done on time and submitted as well as taking attendance records. Strathmore University ensured that lecturers adhered to the timetable and that they were available whenever they needed to travel to Kakuma for revision sessions with the students. We intend to leverage this partnership as we begin the new project.

The goal for this training is to eventually empower the young women and girls to be self reliant or independent through incorporating ICT with entrepreneurship skills. This will be achieved through ensuring that they go through a program that requires them to come up with and implement a business idea that incorporates ICT knowledge learnt.

1. The girls are also expected to establish ICT clubs in their Vocational Training Centres, where they are expected to meet every week. Through these clubs they discuss what they learnt and perform activities given by their trainers or mentors. The clubs are also used as avenues to train other girls who did not attend the course on what was taught during the week.
2. The girls will identify their skills and talents, and use ICT knowledge learnt  to amplify it. For example, the different skill sets and talents that they may have are such as: hairdressing, tailoring, singing, dancing, craftsmanship etc. One of the goals of the training will be creating competitive online business portfolios to establish online presence.
3. A Customised Local Curriculum on Digital Literacy and entrepreneurship including training manuals to be provided to the participants
4. The program will have a compulsory transfer of skills phase that will ensure that an additional 40 girls are trained every year by the certified Program Ambassadors (Snowball Technique). 
5. Creation of 250 competitive online business portfolios in 5 years: The girls will be taught to design competitive online portfolios.

Strathmore University through @iLabAfrica will contribute towards the success of the project in a technical capacity. @iLabAfrica is well known for its numerous contributions in the area of ICT research in line with the achievement of SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs) of the UN as well as Kenya’s Vision 2030. In the past, the organisation has been heavily involved in education projects, more so in leveraging on the use of ICTs to revolutionise delivery of education content to students at different levels of study.

We also plan to leverage on the networks that we have. Our potential partners/ collaborators include corporates like Safaricom. The main area of partnership with Safaricom will be in availing Internet connectivity at an affordable rate. We already have a partnership with them where they allow Strathmore Students to access some of our learning content at a subsidized rate. 

We previously worked with UNHCR and Windle Trust Kenya on a project of enhancing affordable accessibility of education in refugee camps and we will apply for more funding to scale up the project. We also plan to look for sustained donations and grants through The World Bank which provides funding to a variety of projects that fall under the theme of poverty eradication and provision of equal access to quality education. In this light, they will be a valuable partner in providing the funds needed to carry out the project to completion.

Our main goal is to improve the digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills of marginalised women and girls at Kakuma refugee camp, ultimately improving their economic conditions and livelihoods. A partnership with solve will provide the much needed technical and financial support needed to achieve this goal.
The technical barriers previously mentioned will be addressed through establishment of a stakeholder steering committee that will comprise representatives from Solve, its partners and @iLabAfrica Strathmore University. This committee will provide technical leadership and advisory needed to steer the project to successful completion.
An initial financial support of USD 100,000 will be used to cover program implementation costs such as Learning Management System setup costs, curriculum development, content digitization, server hosting costs, travel (field visits from Nairobi to Kakuma camp and back), accommodation, facilitators (training assistants at Kakuma) expenses, provision of backup internet, audiovisual equipment, design and development of the digital literacy and entrepreneurship manuals, monitoring and evaluation among others.

We are seeking partners to provide financial and technical support to enable our solution to reach women and girls in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Specifically, we seek support in the following areas: 1) funding to cater for Learning Management System setup costs, curriculum development, content digitization, server hosting costs, training of users, remuneration of trainers and mentors, project management costs and maintenance and technical support costs; 2) business model: Vocational training centres are a key component of our business model. We will forge sustainable relationships with vocational training centres at Kakuma, through which we will deliver our program to women and girls and; 3) technical advisory: a steering committee comprising representatives from key stakeholders is needed to provide overall project leadership.

We would like to partner with the following organisations:

1. UNHCR - we have a history of working with the UNHCR in a previous program to support refugees. Given that our objective is to empower refugees, UNHCR would contribute a wealth of experience since it has delivered similar programs.
2. Windle Trust Kenya (WTK) - this NGO is mandated by the UNHCR to carry out any educational related projects within refugee camps in Kenya. Thus, for our program to succeed, a partnership with WTK would be essential so as to reach out to the target group effectively. We envision that WTK would be our implementing partner as the organisation has field offices in Kakuma.
3. Safaricom - this is the leading operator in Kenya which has already made investments in provision of 4G mobile network in Kakuma. We’d like to partner with Safaricom to boost the current mobile network infrastructure at the vocational training centres which shall be used as training centres for this program.
4. WiLearn4Life - We have an existing partnership with this NGO, which produces mobile learning kits. We would like to partner with this organisation to deploy the learning kits which do not rely on an-always-on Internet connection. Through this partnership we would broaden our value proposition to include Open Source eLearning material beyond what we propose, i.e. ICT, Digital Literacy and Entrepreneurship course material. 
5.  MIT Faculty would be an important partner in evaluating proposed pedagogical approaches. Solve members can provide much needed financial and technical support.

The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion is open to solutions that advance the economic, financial, and political inclusion of refugees. 

Our Digital Literacy program in Kakuma Refugee Camp aligns with well this goal and seeks to empower women and girls in refugee camps (through the incorporation of a snowball technique) with digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills that will enable to acquire necessary skills that will make them self reliant, increase their opportunities of employment as well as enable them to be self-employed through establishment of their own business ventures. This in turn leads to economic empowerment of the women and the community as a whole.

Our Digital Literacy program at Kakuma Refugee camp targets young women and girls of between the ages of 16 - 24 years and seeks to empower them by equipping them with digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills.

This will be made possible through innovative technologies of Moodle Learning Management system and BigBlueButton web conferencing facilities that will provide live interaction between trainer and learners. Kakuma Refugee camp has vocational training centres equipped with computer labs that will enable this to be possible.

A Snowballing technique will also be used to teach ICT skills to a representative number of girls who will be trained, and thereafter they will be tasked with the responsibility of cascading this knowledge to as many girls as possible. This will ensure that the girls are computer savvy so as to allow them to make effective use of the technologies which will be used to deliver learning content.

At the end of the program the girls trained will be expected to come up with online business portfolios creating visibility and drawing attention of the global community to their work.

The prize from Innovation for Women will enable us to deploy our solution and program with the aim of delivering these skills directly to 750 girls within a span of five years.

Our Digital Literacy program at Kakuma Refugee camp aims to equip marginalized and vulnerable young women and girls of between the ages of 16 - 24 years and seeks to empower them with digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills as well as offer virtual mentorship.

Our program aims to use a snowballing technique to teach ICT skills to a representative number of girls who will be trained, and thereafter they will be tasked with the responsibility of cascading this knowledge to as many girls as possible. This will ensure that the girls are computer savvy so as to allow them to make effective use of the technologies which we will use to deliver learning content.

At the end of the program the girls trained will be expected to come up with online business portfolios creating visibility and drawing the attention of the global community to their work.

The GM prize on Learning for Women and Girls will enable us to create awareness and encourage girls to embrace STEM through the use of Moddle to deliver digital literacy skills, entrepreneurship skills and virtual mentorship to directly impact 750 girls within a span of five years.

Our Digital Literacy program at Kakuma Refugee camp aims to equip young women and girls of between the ages of 16 - 24 years and seeks to empower them with digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills as well as offer virtual mentorship, ultimately improving their economic conditions and livelihoods.

Our program aims to use a snowballing technique to teach ICT skills to a representative number of girls who will be trained, and thereafter they will be tasked with the responsibility of cascading this knowledge to as many girls as possible. This will ensure that the girls are computer savvy so as to allow them to make effective use of the technologies which we will use to deliver learning content.

At the end of the program the girls trained will be expected to come up with online business portfolios creating visibility and drawing the attention of the global community to their work.

The Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy will enable us to create awareness and encourage girls to embrace STEM through the use of Moddle to deliver digital literacy skills, entrepreneurship skills and virtual mentorship to directly impact 750 women and girls within a span of five years.

Once implemented successfully, the program can be replicated to other parts of the world.