Build an eLearning Center in rural Malawi!

Last weekend was an exciting one for Abundance, we got a lot done!

We are happy to report that over the weekend, solar power was installed, keepods distributed, Rachel device uploaded with requested learning materials and laptops were provided to the eLearning Center at Mbando village. 

If you remember in September this year, we introduced the Rachel and Keepod technologies to the Mbando village. At that session, the community had made a long list of learning materials. It ranged from technologies such as soapmaking, to school textbooks to leadership trainings etc. We are happy to report that most of these resources have been downloaded on to the Rachel server and the village can now access it. Thanks to University of Massachusetts's World Library, which freely provided these resources. 

Then, a little miracle happened, which helped us to scale up our impacts threefold at no extra cost!

We had initially planned to procure 50 keepods to provide to 50 users in the village. This was based on a budget of the "retail" price of keepods in Malawi. We were fortunate that ShiftIT's Carl Meyer, who is our technology advisor knew the Keepod founders in USA. Carl connected us to them and they offered us a discount for non-profit organizations. So we were able to procure 150 keepods directly from Keepod USA. So now, 150 people can access the eLearning Center instead of 50! 

We bought three keepod ready laptops and gave it to the eLearning Center this weekend. The laptops provided are working perfectly well with the solar power at the center. 

We want to buy a few more laptops in the months to come. If you have old laptops you want to get rid of please get in touch with us. It will be put to good use at the center, especially as more users will be accessing the center than originally planned.

During the weekend, Abundance also held a two-day training session. SourceIT sent an accredited trainer to Mbando village to train the users. Enjoy the photos of these activities and please click on the short 2 min video at the end of this message!

Thanks once again for being part of this exciting project. Please do know that all this was possible due to your generosity! 

Links:

• Watch our video of setting up the eLearning Center!

"We welcome technologies such as eLearning for rural communities, and are excited that this will enhance education", said MacDonald Kuse, Division head of Eastern Region, Ministry of Education, Malawi, when the Abundance team members met him on 21st August 2018. The team explained to Kuse at his office about Rachel and Keepod technologies and its potential to provide learning resources to communities which are cut off from the grid and have no wifi access. 

The team went on to hold a workshop on the 24th of August at Chilimba Secondary School, the location of the eLearning Center in Mbando village. It was a well-attended session, with the Chief of the village in attendance, mother's groups, youth groups, teachers and village committee members attending too. ShiftIT's trainer explained about the technologies to community members and Abundance team collected additional information requests from the participants. It was exciting for the community to access learning resources through laptops and smartphones. Many of them were seeing this for the first time and their excitement was evident on their faces as they clicked a button and a video started playing, or they scrolled down the long list of electronic books, and showed keen interest to learn through this center. 

The Abundance team asked the what additional learning resources rthey would like in addition to the 500GB of materials preloaded on to Rachel.  The participants made a list that ranged from "Leadership skills", to Malawian textbooks to DIY videos on making soap to "Climate Change"! The Rachel device has been sent to ShiftIT to upload these additional materials. 

The Abundance team had a fun-filled day on the 2nd of September gathering together volunteers and members to paint the room where the eLearning center will be hosted. We realised, painting walls can be a good team-building exercise! Furniture for the center was also donated on that day. A painting of the Abundance logo (tree of life) was done by a local artist and the names of all those who donated were painted on the logo. This painting, framed with bamboo is now proudly displayed at the eLearning Center room. A testimony that ordinary people can come together to do extraordinary things!

Abundance is now busy with procuring solar panels, keepods and laptops and will keep you posted as we go along this wonderful journey to bring the internet to remote rural Mbando village!