World Librarians

In Malawi we saw a need for access to information and technology to level the playing field of access to quality education materials in remote offline communities. We drew our inspiration from William Kamkwamba (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind) who changed his circumstances by reading a book. Once we started servicing this need we saw further need for delivery of requested content to these offline communities. The World Librarians system responds to offline content requests which provide information on how to solve problems on the ground. The technology we use is low cost and high impact and can also provide classroom learning environments and a whole lot more. Shift IT’s deployments in Malawi has been testament to success and Net Billa Net in Kenya would like to adopt the same and scale our solution. 

The problem of access to information highlighted by the film and book “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” is still an existing problem in Malawi. Rural and Peri-urban communities don't have internet access nor the funds. On the ground they have problems that require solutions  which could be solved if the information and resources on how to solve it were available to them. Classrooms lack adequate resources and so do libraries. This problem is prevalent in most disconnected and low income communities across Malawi and Africa. Our solution focuses on providing schools and libraries with fundamental parts of the internet in an offline form using recycled and low cost technology to enable them to request specific content they need in a current  offline setting. 

Our solution involves setting up  RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning) offline servers at a school or library. We are currently the only org in the world that has been given permission to host the bootable OS Keepod ISO on our servers for offline access. Users can create their own end user devices with a flash drive and bring old PC’s back to life to access the RACHEL content. We also use an offline data delivery solution called datapost which we were the first to test and help develop in the world. It uses an android app to collect offline requests and deliver them to the internet for servicing by our World Librarian partners at UMass. They also raise funds to cover data costs related to the content delivery as not to place that cost burden on the data courier. On the backend we utilize our Salesforce, Google, Learning Equality, Keepod, World Possible and other partnerships to make the system work and keep track of our workflows, successes and failures.      

Our solution enables private and public requests to be made for any content that is aimed at providing information on how to solve any local problem. Our team does their best to provide the content in legal distributional format that will service the request. We follow up and enquire whether the content provided serviced the request adequately. If not then the team does further searching and provides more content until the requestor is satisfied and the problem is solved. In some cases licensing becomes a stumbling block that prohibits delivery of the exact material requested but we endeavor to provide as much openly commons licensed material as possible that addresses the specific request. For example, curriculum requests in schools in digital format has a licensing challenge attached to it. In Malawi the curriculum has been openly licensed but yet still we are having challenges accessing and providing it despite having formal standing requests to every department involved that has been ignored. We believe that with a Solve MIT partnership we may be able to move some of these stumbling blocks just by association. 

Equitable classrooms are created by providing equality within the learning environment. By providing the technology combinations we provide we give each learner and coach equal access to learning platforms and content that levels the playing field with other well funded educational institutions. Our technology solutions closes the digital divide between those with access and resources and those who don’t have access and resources. We service any kind of request whether private via datapost or public via Twitter and do not discriminate. Our solution provides ownership of personal computing devices, privacy protection and content based on requests to solve specific on the ground problems. 

Since our establishment in 2015, we have deployed over 100 hybrid locations using technologies that we were the first to use and combine in Malawi to find the right combination to achieve our goals. We now have requests from orgs in other African countries to support them in copying our model. Net Billa Net who will be submitting their own MIT Solve application is one example which we aim to support and in order to help us scale to Kenya and scale further in Malawi and other African countries we require support and mentorship. 

Low cost internet access for problem solving is still very far away for most of Africa. Our solution gives offline users the ability to use technology to gain access to information that will potentially solve problems in their every day lives and give learners access to equatable and quality educational resources in cutting edge digital environments. Kolibri is the software we use mainly on the RACHEL servers for classroom environments. Kolibri has the ability to monitor learner progress while delivering access to information and learning in a easily managed way. Coaches are able to assign lessons to classes or individual learners as well as create offline assessments in the form of quizzes. The learners are kept safe as the content on the servers is all educational and not age restricted. The users learn how to use the internet responsibly without being connected to the internet. We are also the first org in Malawi to use the Kolibri data portal for usage statistic collection. Our solution also includes an innovative approach to end user devices and recycling of old broken HD computers. 

We currently serve over 10 000.

We would like to scale to serve over 100 000 in the next year and up to 1 000 000 or more over the next 5 years. 

We measure our impacts by looking at school performances before deployment of our technologies vs post deployment. Were the technologies are used we normally see grades improve and we receive positive feedback not only from learners but also from the coaches. In library settings we rely on feedback from librarians who collect success stories of individuals who managed to solve problems with the information hey received from their requests. 

Shift IT has 4 directors who work on its operations on a part time non paid bases. Our WL UMass partners also work in a team of roughly 10 volunteers to search and service requests.

Carl Meyer has worked in the ICT sector in Malawi for over 15 years. He deployed Malawi’s first 100 public access wifi hotspots for a local leading ISP.
Keshia Osman Meyer is a media owner and runs Capital Radio in Malawi. She is well versed on content delivery and technology mediums.
Prathik Pankaj runs OfficeMart who led Shift IT in the deployment of 20 RACHEL locations this year in the Digital Malawi project funded by the WB and PPPC.
Tombo Banda is an engineer by profession.

From the founding of Shift IT we wanted to maintain a gender balance in our leadership and we have managed to maintain this and aim to continue to do so in future and also continue our non discriminatory foundations. 

We believe that we have created quite a useful and support worthy solution. We are applying to Solve for assistance in mentorship and partnerships to help us scale our solution more globally.  

Human capital has made our achievements possible to date, with the right people anything is possible. With support we could improve on our human capital and strengthen our operations for scale. 

Our business model as we scale does need to be looked at and adapted to scale correctly. Any mentorship we can gain will go a long way. 

As scale equals growth, financial practices have to be adapted as investors are sought for further growth. Organic growth is what we have relied on up to now.