Young Maasai students with their new tablets, 2020. Photo: Josephat Mashati.
OUR COVID-19 RESPONSE IN KENYA
Schools in Kenya abruptly closed in response to COVID-19 in mid-March, 2020. The Ministry of Education worked hard to get lessons online, yet connectivity challenges prevented children in remote communities from accessing this learning. Few households in rural regions have access to electricity, internet or smartphones, magnifying the long-standing inequities for rural students who have to compete with their urban peers to gain entrance to secondary school. School closures also significantly heighten girls’ vulnerability to FGC and early marriage.
OUR RESPONSE
Just weeks prior to the school closures, we had worked with the community of Morijo to open one of the first affordable day secondary schools in the Loita Hills region and were on track to open three additional schools. We quickly pivoted to research offline possibilities to deliver learning, limited to using resources already within communities due to curfews and travel restrictions. After weeks of challenges, we rolled out a remote education program to 100 students in May, 2020. By June, we were able to scale the program to an additional 200 students.
Using Kolibri, an offline app that makes education available in low-resource locations such as refugee camps, and tablets populated with content from eLimu, one of Kenya’s most respected digital educational content providers, students are now able to study their standard curriculum and also learn from creative new content from the Khan Academy and other online providers. Tablets are also populated with COVID-19 information for families. To meet the tablets’ charging needs, For the Good is providing direct support to rural clinics and the handful of shopkeepers with access to electricity to serve as charging stations, providing vitally needed income to local communities during COVID-19.
A young girl studies lessons on her tablet at home in 2020. Photo: Josephat Mashati and Team Angaza.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS
Using our access to high speed internet in the States, our U.S. staff, with the help of our young ambassadors, downloaded hundreds and hundreds of eLimu lessons and then painstakingly matched it to the local Kenyan schools’ curriculum. This content was then seeded onto a master tablet at our office in Kenya that our Kenyan Programs Director can then share onto hundreds of student tablets over an offline local network. Content from additional learning channels including the Khan Academy, Career Girls and other tech education sites were also loaded onto tablets to offer additional expanded and imaginative learning resources for students as well as new tools for teachers who are often severely underresourced.
Each student’s tablet is loaded with a month’s worth of lessons. Students are walked through an introductory session on how to use the tool and have access to For the Good staff and teachers for questions when they come in to charge their tablets at local shops and clinics. New lessons for the next month are uploaded in the States, seeded onto the master tablet in Kenya which can then update students’ tablets.
SCALING THE WORK
In June, 2020 we scaled the program to 200 additional Maasai students thanks to a Global Giving fundraising campaign and continued to reach out to schools in neighboring districts to expand the program to any interested teachers. In August, as word about the program spread, our team traveled over 100 KM on motorbikes through rain-soaked, muddy roads to deliver content and teach the program to teachers in a neighboring district in Kenya’s Mara region.
Schools in Kenya reopened for students in all grades in January 2021. The unexpected opportunity COVID created to bring engaging, interactive, up-to-date, digital content to students in the remote Maasai communities we work has proven to be invaluable, and our goal is to continue the program as we return to our core programs of opening secondary schools and enrolling children in primary school.
Teaching the basics of Kolibri to students in the classroom in 2020. Photo: Josephat Mashati and Team Angaza.