E-learning & On-line Program for DHUEEC

We aim to start up an E-learning and On-line program where the school drop-out girls and single teenage mothers can come to study or get learning materials; this is to address the current challenge of the high rate of school drop-out girls.

The current epidemic of COVID-19 has made it worse since the schools has been closed for over 3 months now, and we expect the increase of school drop-out girls for due to long stay at home with poor supervision from parents/ guardians many girls are expected to have been involved in unsafe sexual activities which will automatically force them out of schools due to early pregnancies.

The program will help the school drop-out girls to have effective learning materials from the internet for their private studies and will be able to enroll for the final examinations, hence, achieve their dreams of completing their studies. 

I am striving to reduce the barriers that prevent girls and young women—especially those living in conflict and emergency situations—from reaching key learning milestones.

One of the major challenge is extreme poverty challenges; many girls come from poor families and cannot satisfy their basic needs such as sanitary towels, fare etc, due to such challenges these girls are exposed to sexual activities as source of money to satisfy their needs. According Mwananchi Newspaper of June 17 2014 demonstrates that almost two and a half millions of children are not in schools in Tanzania. Reasons given are many such as unfriendly school environments and home related factors such as extreme poverty.

Another challenge is poor education policy; policy advocates for the expulsion of pregnant girls from schools and failed students in examinations, hence, they are forced out of schools. Both annual reports from DSEO’s office in (2012) and (2013) present the big difference between enrollment and completion rates in secondary schools in Magu district. These reports present the range of truancy to be between 60-75 percent as a result to high secondary school student dropout

We have started E-learning and Online Education program to address the challenges that have been faced by the children from poor families, they have been at their homes for long without getting the privilege to study due to lack smart phones, computers and pads where they can access the learning materials online or can connect with the teachers or education experts.

We intend to improve and expand the program to support more of such children to get enough materials during this COVID-19 epidemic, after the lock-down wave and opening of schools, such children will be able to get materials online, seek the support of the teacher through e-learning, they will be able to download, and print the materials from our Centre for effective and efficient studies in various areas.

We will connect a Wi-Fi in our Centre which will help the beneficiaries to be online and to enjoy the e-learning services intended to be offered in our Centre, we are currently offering the service to only a few children due to lack of enough equipment and materials to facilitate the program to more children. When we get a boost of such materials we will be able to reach more children.

There is a high increase of school drop-out girls every year. Currently, we support 50 poor single teenage mothers and 50 school drop-out girls with business skills, half of them have expressed their desire to pursue their studies if there can be any means and their dreams can only be achieved through their registration as private candidates to do their final examination, in order to prepare themselves they need the program suggested to achieve this.

The success of this program will indirectly impact on the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in our care for 70% of them are from these school drop-out girls and poor single teenage mothers.

We always organize for weekly and monthly seminars and workshops where we engage them in discussions to find the way forward to their extreme poverty state, all the suggestions they give is what we work on as an Organization; they have expressed a desire to do small businesses, have tailoring & hair dressing skills and half of them desire to continue with their studies for their future career developments.

It seeks to reduce the barriers that prevent girls and young women—especially those living in conflict and emergency situations—from reaching key learning milestones

The program aims to support school 50 drop-out girls and 50 poor single teenage mothers forced out of schools due to early pregnancies. The proposed program will facilitate them to access learning materials On-line through the help of the internet for the preparation of enrolling for their final examinations to realize their dreams. Their early pregnancy has inflicted in them a lot of pain and is preventing them from reaching their dreams.

In Tanzania we have only one curriculum used for Primary schools, but in Secondary schools two forms of curriculums are being used; the normal Secondary schools curriculum which takes four years, it is used in all Government and private owned schools while the other known as QT which takes two years is normally used by special schools.

In our case, we will be using the QT approach, but from the observation we have made we realize that QT does not give out good performance results due to many reasons such as short period of studies, you can imagine that these vulnerable groups with many responsibilities in their shoulders are exposed to such duration of studies with limited resources of learning materials. Critically, the two years can be of great help if they have unlimited resources to source their learning materials.

To give the best from our program different from our the normal QT programs, our innovativeness propose for the E-learning and On-line studies which many think can only be used in higher learning institutions to address the challenge students from QT curriculum faces; majority of those students join the program after being forced out of schools due to various reasons: early pregnancies, poor performance in final examinations and extreme poverty, hence the E-learning and On-line program makes the QT program unique and can provide a sustainable and quality education to the vulnerable groups.

I use a new application of an existing technology of E-learning and On-line program, the technology is already being used in many learning institutions but in Tanzania it has not been considered a means of education even in many higher learning institutions and that is why the current COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the education sector, for it has paralyzed our cultural way of learning in all sectors of education including the higher learning institutions, where students must sit in a class and receive lectures physically from the lecturers. Our program embraces the new modern technology of E-learning and On-line program to offer the best services to our beneficiaries.

We will use the computers connected with a Wi-Fi cable purchased from the best and cost friendly Tigo network company which is the most strong network in our area and cheaper to maintain. The network  will help the beneficiaries to be online and to enjoy the e-learning services intended to be offered in our Centre, we are currently offering the service to only a few poor school drop-out girls and poor single teenage mothers due to lack of enough computers and materials to facilitate the program to more beneficiaries. When we get a boost of the computers we will be able to reach more vulnerable persons in this category.

The technology has been widely used learning institutions in developed countries for many years, currently, it is also being used higher learning institutions in developing countries, Tanzania included and so far it has worked successfully. Personally, I have used E-learning and On-line studies to successfully study a BA in Project Management and I used the technique during my University studies to research, get adequate materials from the internet which really promoted my good performance in the University.

I have seen it empower the few beneficiaries in the same program in our Centre, they get a lot of learning materials from the internet, they learn to be more democratic and independent as far as their studies is concerned. It gives more input than the current methodology used now where the students depend on the notes from the teacher. In-fact, the technology works better for the targeted beneficiaries due to their regular activities of taking care of their kids and looking for means to provide them with basic need so they may not regularly cope up with the daily classroom set-up which has been time-tabled.

The problem is the cause of high rate of illiteracy among the poor single teenage mothers and school drop-out girls, it promotes high rate of poverty among the single teenage mothers and orphans & vulnerable children among the community.

The solution will help to reduce the high rate of illiteracy among single teenage mothers and school drop-out girls for it will help to support the school drop-out girls to complete their studies, it will also offer alternative support for the poor single teenage mothers to pursue their dreams in education, the girls who have been forced out of schools due to poor performance will also be able to complete their studies through the program.

The logical framework will help us to link the goal of the program of starting up an E-learning and On-line program where the school drop-out girls and single teenage mothers can come to study or get learning materials; this is to address the current challenge of the high rate of school drop-out girls with the outcome of supporting the school drop-out girls to have effective learning materials from the internet for their private studies and will be able to enroll for the final examinations, hence, achieve their dreams of completing their studies.

It will also help to connect the outputs of the program of reducing the rate of illiteracy among the school-drop out girls and teenage mothers, to reduce high rate of poverty, and to allow the girls who have failed their national examinations to repeat and achieve their goals.

To measure the achievements we will able to use monitoring & evaluation, objective & impact analysis tools to know whether we achieved our goals; we will collect the information for the indicators by the use of research instrumental tools such as focus group discussions, questionnaire, observations and case studies involving all the stakeholders such as poor single teenage mothers, school drop-out girls, teachers, Government officials, parents of the affected groups, local community leaders and religious leaders.

It currently serves 100 poor single teenage mothers and school drop-out girls, intend to reach 2,000 by the end of one year and over 10,000 within 5 years.

Our goal is to support a total of 2,000 school drop-out girls and single teenage mothers within next year and over 10,000 within the next 5 years. We will be expanding the program to reach many vulnerable groups we support by acquiring more space and increasing the admission rate.

We will also reach out to other Districts, Regions, and countries to replicate the program to similar target groups in those areas and overt 10 years we target to reach over 100,000 poor school drop-out girls and single teenage mothers; this will address the current challenge of the high rate of school drop-out girls and extreme poverty among the single teenage mothers.

• Cultural challenges: The practices of cultural activities in the area has been identified as one of the cause of early sexual activities for school girls leading to early pregnancies forcing girls out of schools and rendering them the term teenage mothers.
• Extreme poverty challenges; Many girls come from poor families who cannot be able to satisfy their basic needs forcing them to be easily lured into early sex in exchange to the satisfaction of their basic needs.
• Government policy; the education policy advocates for the expulsion of pregnant girls or those who have failed their final examinations from attending schools.The challenges will the lack of computer experts to carry out repairs in case of malfunctioning of the computers.

• Technical challenges:The challenges will the lack of computer experts to carry out repairs in case of malfunctioning of the computers. 

To address the technical challenge we will have to hire a special expert who will be doing regular general services to the computers and repair them in case of their malfunctions.

To address the cultural challenge we have already started to sensitize the community and the Government to stop some of the activities leading to this especially attending of school girls to night dances organized for a week during the harvesting ceremony known ‘Bulabo’ cultural events.

To address the challenge caused by extreme poverty we have started to support poor girls especially those in adolescent stage with basic needs such as sanitary towels and learning materials which when they lack forces to seek alternatives.

To address the Government policy we are carrying out a research which seeks to advice the Government on the sustainable approach to the policy.

The team is part of the Organization implementing the program

We have 7 total number of the team

3 full time

2 part time

2 other workers

The Executive Director: Has a BA in Sustainable Development suitable for effective running of such programs, he is also a qualified teacher and has experience and computer skills, hence, helps a lot in the program.

The Executive Secretary: Has a Diploma in Computer technologies which he has used effectively to teach the program to the targeted beneficiaries.

The two teachers we have are computer literates and have a wide experience in using and teaching the basic knowledge in computer.

The volunteers we have are experts in computer and have helped a lot in teaching the computer skills; some are even experts in a way that they can repair the software malfunctions of a computer.

To effectively address the issue we have incorporated some female teachers working with girls in different schools so that we can effectively reach the adolescent girls in schools for individual and group counseling for the Executive Director and volunteers are good with effective skills to carry out the program. With all the qualified, experienced and efficient skills our team have we have been able to carry out the program effectively; hence, will still use similar means to reach out to many in our target.

We are currently partnering with Walkabout Foundation to support poor single teenage mothers and school drop-out girls who are physically challenged with wheelchairs to ease their mobility.

Our business directly provides its products and services to its customers who are the school drop-out girls and poor single teenage mothers.

Our business directly provides its products and services to its customers who are the school drop-out girls and poor single teenage mothers.

To reach out to our beneficiaries we will seek support from local and international friends for donations, we will seek for grants from related Organizations. We plan to sell the products and services to school drop-out girls and single teenage mothers at a subsidized fee to help in the sustainability of the program.

We will also reach out to other persons from middle class families who are ready to learn computer skills at a fee; we will set the timetable to achieve the plan for the sustainability of the program.

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We need funding from MIT to achieve our goals.

To help us market our program in the media and other sites.

Organizations to fund our program, organizations dealing with computer technologies and support will be able to effectively help me run the program effectively, and finally organizations who can send us volunteers.

Our program use innovative technology to improve quality of life for women and girls through education empowerment.

Our program seeks to enable working-age adults to build the skills and resources they need to access well computer skills for better jobs.

Our program seeks to increase literacy rates among adults and that advance inclusive economic growth through upskilling and greater digital literacy.