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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Celebrating a Milestone: 4 Years of Running Successful Community ICT Projects

I have since 2013 worked as Project Leader for the Community Outreach Project at Youth Skills for Development. In this period, I have hosted and supervised/collaborated with a total of 20 Students from Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands; designed projects in Liaison with the COP Project Office at Radboud University Nijmegen, in collaboration with Student Volunteers from the university and beneficiary schools/community, Supervised Student Volunteers during project implementation, evaluated and reported on these projects. 

The projects have benefited about 1875 pupils and 70 teachers from Chibote Girls Secondary School, Mindolo Secondary School, Chimwemwe Secondary School, Natwange Primary School and Kawama Secondary School; 8 school leavers, 10 young women, 17 Teen Mothers. A total of 1,980 local direct beneficiaries.
Pupils attending ICT lesson at Chibote Girls Secondary School in Kitwe, Zambia, during the 2014 COP Project
This has been made possible by my colleagues at Youth Skills for Development (their brains spin :-) ), the great 20 student Volunteers, the School management at various schools and the COP Project Office at RUN together with partners.

The educational institute for Computing Science and Information Sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen has has been offering the course Community Outreach Project faculty wide since 2006.The Community Outreach Project offers students the opportunity to do a group project in a developing country. Students learn how to successfully execute an (oftentimes) ICT related project in a limited environment. Attention is paid to the effects of cultural differences and how to deal with those. Students also learn how to make sure the solution is sustainable by means of the three-level approach.

For these projects, capacity building is the core priority, which is refined to education, knowledge transfer, and gender issues. A number of projects concerns the structure of knowledge related so-called “tele-centres” and establishing ICT learning programmes, especially in primary schools.

Below is a summary of projects:

2013 - Hosted and supervised 4 Student Volunteers from Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands plus 4 local Volunteers for a period of 21 days. Successfully undertook a project with more than 400 pupils and about 40 Teachers as beneficiaries, providing them with Basic ICT Skills.

2014 - Hosted and supervised 8 Student Volunteers from Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and 8 Local Volunteers for a period of about 21 days. Successfully implemented a project benefiting about 10 young women with Basic Entrepreneurship and ICT Skills, 8 local Volunteers with Basic ICT Skills, about 30 Teachers with Basic ICT Skills and about 500 pupils with Basic ICT Skills.

2015 - Hosted and supervised 4 Student Volunteers from Radboud University Nijmegen for a period of about 21 days. Implemented a project which benefited about 700 pupils with Basic ICT Skills.

2016 - Hosted and supervised 6 Student Volunteers from Radboud University Nijmegen for a period of 21 days. Implemented a project which benefited 275 pupil with Basic ICT Skills, and 17 Teen Mothers with Basic ICT and Job Search Skills.

This is just the beginning.