Dream Big

Our proposal is to create employment opportunities for the underserved in The Gambia by implementing a digital platform and learning program in two schools that will in turn act as hubs in 2 high poverty areas of The Gambia. These “hubs” will not only serve the 2000 students, but will draw in girls from local communities who have dropped out of school, orphans and those with disabilities. The fund will be primarily utilised against infrastructure such as Internet connectivity, solar panels, computers, digital platform (ServiceNow) and we will only employ people directly from the underserved populations to scale these programs across the country. The Gambia is the smallest country within mainland Africa with a population of about 2 million  and thus the impact of this solution will be transformational. As these digital hubs will be built alongside local staff, the model is repeatable and scalable across the country.

• According to the World Bank, 48.6% of the Gambia population live in poverty and in rural areas, poverty is even more widespread, at almost 70%. 
• According to UNESCO's report of 2011, there is a significant lack of skills amongst Teachers. (Predominantly Maths, Science, Tech) 
• 25% of girls complete their education. Girls with higher education are 24% more likely to be assisted in childbirth; the probability of having at least one child dying drops from 36% to 19%. As such, we will develop opportunities for these girls so that they too can dream.
• Technical and Vocational Education Training in The Gambia have the best employment prospects out of 25 African countries (95 percent are employed). 
• The UNESCO report also identified the lack of a modern platform that could assess learning achievements to identify challenges in real time.

Our plan is to address these 5 points with a Technology platform such as ServiceNow and provide career developing opportunities for the underserved. This digital revolution will start in 2 of the poorest areas, the 2 schools will act as learning hubs on behalf of the community, and in the first year we aim to impact 2500 people. This represents a minimum 1750 underserved.     

The two schools we have selected are in the rural areas and thus have the highest level of poverty. We are Principals of the schools in Basse and Mansa konko and witness the pains and tribulations of the local community we serve. As the main secondary schools in these areas, we are at the heart of the local community. It hurts us when students, especially girls, drop out of secondary school education. With 75%+ dropouts, we cannot do anything for them as there are no opportunities for them in the wider communities. They, with other underserved populations feel unwanted and have no dreams and no aspirations. We want them to just have an opportunity to dream by creating simple but relevant programs that will link to employment. A MOOC or just online training will not solve anything. We have spoken to many employers who would hire these underserved people but not without minimum required skills. We intend to provide these skills through our solution, create opportunities and at the same time raise the level of digital literacy to the 2000 students in our schools in the first phase. 

Our solution (+5 year vision) is to create digital hubs that will become the centre of learning for the local communities in The Gambia. These hubs will be manned by local trained staff (we will seek help from Servicenow to mentor us via telepresence) and use a Train-the-trainer approach to make our solution scalable and thus build further hubs. Each "hub" will have high quality fibre broadband, stable electricity using solar panels where necessary, computers, digital learning program starting from a basic level and clean drinking water (so that the poorest who spend all day fetching water, come to learn instead). All hubs will be connected to each other to create community learning. In these learning programs, not only do we intend to teach digital literacy that will create employment opportunities for the underserved, but we also intend to introduce basic healthcare and agriculture programs for the local communities in the future. This is all about using Technology to address the needs of the poorest and underserved populations. Our plan is to start with 2 schools in the next academic year (2020-2021) and scale this process employing only people from the underserved populations to scale our program to other schools and communities. We know that these people will need a lot of care and attention, but we believe this will create a transformation never seen before in The Gambia. 

Using a platform like Servicenow we would like to be able to create assessments and real time reports that can show progress. Whilst we don't have the skills to do this, we want to utilise the Servicenow technology to help train us. This was one of the points highlighted by UNESCO. It will allow us to monitor the learning but also assess individuals. The platform will be instrumental in introducing digital literacy skills across an entire population through an innovative approach. 

The current level of IT/digital literacy levels in education is teaching learners about Microsoft. So our solution will inspire many to achieve greater things in Technology and maybe soon we will be able to rival some of the other solutions you have received where the digital media production is amazing, whilst ours is at a basic level. 

Our vision also allows us to create skills that will entice companies all across the world to hire people in The Gambia in support centres. If India can do this, why can't we?

It is our approach that is innovative as it has not been tried before, at least not in The Gambia. The digital learning hubs we plan to create use  Technology to teach, learn, monitor and assess in real time. We are using modern Science to provide electricity via solar panels and we are creating these hubs in communities, with communities, for the communities. It allows the solution to scale because the knowledge is transferred between communities and in the process the underserved are learning skills they never would have had previously. As a minimum, it makes them more employable, but brings them into the digital era that otherwise would be skipping this generation entirely. Once these hubs are embedded, we can enhance the digital learning programs and use the hubs as centres of excellence. 

We have never tried such a program before but at the School, our staff comprise of learned and experienced individuals who are going to ensure the success of this program. We feel though that our vision is achievable and realistic having spoken to a number of employers in the country.  

We are currently serving 0.

We will start with serving 2000 learners from the 2 schools we have identified by end of year 1, but expect to draw in an additional 500 underserved from local communities. Our total year1 target is thus 2500.

We expect to double this in year 2, to 5000. 

In year 3 to 10,000

And in year 5 to 50,000. 

As the population of The Gambia is 2 million, this represents a high percentage of the population. 

The goals are to raise the levels of digital literacy amongst the underserved populations in The Gambia but with the technology by Servicenow, we expect that this will have a transformational impact on the entire population of The Gambia and expect that business and government departments will embrace this technology which in turn will employ employment opportunities for those going through our programs.

The national language of The Gambia is English so we do not see any language specific barriers. The main obstacle is the infrastructure and in particular the provision of broadband and stable electricity. We will be utilising the funds primarily to address these needs, and have already agreed a partnership with a local NGO to support us in the roll out of this program. Using a Train the trainer program, we can overcome the Technical barriers. Once the program is established, since it is scalable and repeatable, we do not see any barriers other than continued support on infrastructure. 

The $100,000 will support the infrastructure for the first 2 years according to our financial analysis and costs associated. Employers will then contribute towards these programs as we supply them with trained personnel. 

Not applicable

Not applicable

40 teaching staff at our 2 selected schools and 20 volunteers from local NGO. None of them will be paid any salaries from this project.

We know the problems, we believe we have the solution, and we are all not seeking any personal funding for this program. All funds will go towards the infrastructure, and employing the underserved. 

HF in The Gambia and IAAAE. 

Already explained previously. 

Once the solution is in place, we expect local businesses and government to contribute as well as International NGO's.