Digital Transformation in Schools

- Access to ICT equipment is a great challenge in most of the deprived areas especially rural communities in Africa.

- We have rolled out a computer4schools Ghana campaign with a cloud-based tracing and tracking system in place.https://inventorysystem.comput... to enable our donors as well as auditors and government officials to follow the hardware donated for deprived schools. This will enable us acquire a lot of computer hardware donations for schools

- With partnership from governments and the use of the cloud based inventory system computer hardware donors will trust to work with us for transparency and assist us get a lot of donations to be able to reach deprived communities not just in Ghana but globally. With the existence of ICT equipment a lot of the youth and teachers can be trained with the needed ICT skills for either employment or creating their own businesses through entrepreneurship.

Access to ICT equipment especially computers and its accessories is our major problem. According to Afrobarometer 2020, fewer than three in 10 Ghanaian households (28%) have a computer. Among rural and poor households, only about one in seven (14%) have a computer.  Six out of 10 Ghanaians (61%) never or rarely (“less than once a month”) use the Internet. Among rural and poor respondents, fewer than one in four go online at least “a few times a month.”Lack of access to devices and the Internet especially in rural and poor households point to difficulties, that many students would not have access to ICT labs and a quality ICT training.

 According to https://borgenproject.org/comp...Ghana has a poverty rate that touches roughly 55 percent of its population, with only 24% possessing internet access. This acute problem owes itself in part to a large number of its youth, who grow up in the absence of ICT education accessibility.

In partnership with our sister NGO in the Nederlands "Climbing the right tree". Our logistics team in Europe collects working and good condition ICT equipments especially computers from IT companies, schools, individuals and other NGOs in Europe. Using our cloud-based inventory system each equipment is keyed in and labelled with a unique code, cleaned and packaged for shipment to Ghana. Donors can track their donations via a unique code sent to them via email after donation. Upon arrival in Ghana our logistics team prepares the equipment for deployment to the next selected deprived community. In each stage, the status of the equipment is changed either shipped, on sea, arrived, ready to be deployed and final destination.

After the deployment a minimum of 5-day train the trainer program is organized for all teachers regardless of the subject to give them a basic ICT skills training, including basic hardware training for the maintenance of the equipment.

Our team also provides support for every community via phone call or whatsapp call. Once every year our team visit these communities to perform monitoring and evaluation assessment.

The inclusion of computer access within the Ghanaian education system allows teens to develop valuable 21st-century technology literacy. It stands to open critical doors to higher education. In an era that is inarguably dominated by mobile phones, laptops, and wireless communications, access proves paramount. Programs like those presented by our learning transformation which has taught nearly 16,000 students and trained over 120 teachers, enrich Ghana’s youth specifically with computer science as well as coding languages classes, paving the way for future innovations, as well as national economic growth.

Prior to any community being selected, we perform a "quick scan" where we get to ascertain what they have against what they need before we deploy to that community.

Being able to acquire the ICT equipment provides access and our train the trainer approach takes care of the training which equips everyone, regardless of age, gender, education, location, or ability, with culturally relevant digital literacy skills to enable participation in the digital economy.

Our model is being implemented not only in Ghana but other Africa countries including, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Burkina Faso.

Our cloud-based inventory system which allows tracking and tracing of donated ICT equipment makes it handy and provides transparency to our donors.

We also have a digital library providing quality open access resource to African learners. By doing this, deprived communities donot only get access to computers but also elearning materials to develop their IT skills for job opportunities.

Currently we serve about 25,000 people.

In the coming year we are hoping to serve about 35,000 people.

In five years we hope to serve about 80,000 people.

The results of the students progressively improve during final exams after equipping their schools with Computers. This is also gearing the achievement of goal 4 of the SDG, which is quality education.

Full-time Staff: 1

Contract: 3

Other Workers:3

We have a dynamic team possessing top-level IT skills and education experience as teachers. Our team have been very supportive. Since most of us are from humble homes, we tend to have a lot of passion for the project and we understand how it feels not to have the necessary tools to accomplish a simple task.

Below are our approach to building a diverse team

EMPOWERMENT

We believe in empowering young Africans through knowledge transfer.

FAMILY

We value the African concept of the extended family and this is how we want to relate to all our partners.

HOPE

We believe that young educated people can have a positive impact on their families and communities.

QUALITY

We are committed to quality according to international standards of professionalism.

SYNERGY

We believe in doing business in a frugal and humble way, without compromising on the quality of our services.

PRACTICALITY

We believe educational software can benefit education everywhere in the world, but only when it is combined with intensive personal contact and practical training.

HUMILITY

We believe in doing business in a frugal and humble way, without compromising on the quality of our services.

EQUALITY

We believe in equality for all people, in fair trade and fair working conditions.

To reach the goals mentioned above, We seek partnerships to:

• Mentor and advise project scalability and strategic planning
• Support marketing and communications that clearly distribute data
• Build connections to impact investors and grantors to progress their fundraising strategy

We have selected the above areas because we believe getting training and partners in those areas will improve our line of work.

MIT Faculty - Partnership for volunteer trainers IT

Learning Transformation & Training programs all over Africa

We have rolled out learning transformation and training programs all over Africa to equip young people with 21st-century learning, affordable practical training and career coaching which will give them a competitive advantage on the local and international job market. We believe this project can win as this prize.