In 2021, we began piloting our first RACHEL in partnership with the new school in Olmesutie. Our goal with this program was to test sustainable solutions to evolve our emergency COVID remote learning response become to an ongoing program bringing interactive, student-centered content to classrooms in remote, offline schools. Each of the five new secondary schools we’ve launched with communities since 2020 now has their own RACHEL. Because the upfront costs of RACHELs are relatively small and the content curation we do is easily transferable to other RACHELS in our network, we began providing RACHELs to other struggling schools in the region and training teachers in its use in 2022. Currently seven schools, including five partner schools and two other local struggling boarding schools, are using the RACHELs.

We continually curate additional content for these RACHELS to ensure teachers and students can continually explore new engaging, interactive, student-centered lessons and easily access the lessons they need.

Resources like RACHELs are especially critical to improving learning in rural classrooms. Schools in rural Kenya are typically significantly under-resourced. Classrooms of 40 or 50 students may have just a handful of tattered textbooks to share between them for the day. Compounding this lack of resources, educators often have to juggle teaching several grades at once. The ability to bring interactive digital content into classrooms via RACHELS offers opportunities to improve learning outcomes in both primary and secondary schools by enhancing learning in the classroom. RACHELS also offer students in rural areas opportunities to acquire technical and digital literacy –– often for the first time, increasing their future educational and professional opportunities.