Escaping poverty through SolarSPELL

The Clarisse Machanguana Foundation is driven to improve youth’s lives through an online learning experience; a strong commitment to solving the limited access to education and digital illiteracy Mozambicans face.

SolarSPELL is the hope Mozambicans need, a digital “library that mimics an online experience so that even in the absence of internet connectivity, crucial skills like information literacy and digital competency can be developed,” as advocated by the SolarSPELL concept. The 4IR is digital, and it defines progress through one’s ability to tap into the world of the internet. For regions without basic infrastructure like roads and electricity, servers and routers are distant dreams. SolarSPELL will empower youth with the otherwise ubiquitous skill 

Furthermore, outdated curriculums and cultural traditions that render women prisoners to early marriages and housewives roles, will be dealt with; Digital libraries are the solution to broaden knowledge and improve the community's understanding of global affairs.

Mozambique has an exceedingly growing young population that is uneducated and unemployed, we aim to solve the problem of poor access to education and digital illiteracy. 

According to Mozambique’s Ministry of Education reports “less than half of the population finishes primary school, and of those only 8 percent transition to secondary school.  Mozambique’s overall literacy rate is 47 percent; female literacy (28 percent) lags far behind that of males (60 percent).” https://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/education

Contributing factors; Scarce transportation, distances from home to school and vice-versa, youth are pressured to drop out of school to contribute to house income, disbelief in the school benefits, dependency on farms without proper business models.

While 94 percent of girls in Mozambique enroll in primary school, more than half drop out by the fifth grade, only 11 percent continue on to study at the secondary level, and just 1 percent continue on to college. The village of Marracuene with 136.000 people, where 41% are younger than 15 years and 48% of people are analphabetic, women in particular would gradually break the cycle of poverty.

The solution is to provide information, digital awareness and networking and capacity building skills to broaden their knowledge and open their world to new opportunities. The solution offers a curriculum that encompasses higher education and provides skills to ideas, business startups, vocational resources to improve their passions, understanding and communities lives. 

Training takes place in the first phase, trainers train trainers, who can then adequately support participants, students are prepared and encouraged to acquire critical thinking skills, create networks to advocate for their services or interest and learn to approach banks with strong proposals and sorts. Graduates after undergoing vocational training will be encouraged to find jobs or start their own. They give back to the program as mentors to the students, providing workshops and clinics, offering internship opportunities and eventually hire upcoming students. Students would also be the driving forces to an  interaction with communities to understand the needs and provide services. 

This project will use solar empowered and generating Wifi for digital libraries that feed smartphones, Ipads and or computers allowing  people in reccondit parts of the world to travel through books and networks. Digital Library implemented a circular economy concept to be sustainable and reach masses to scale its impact and transformative breakthrough in the poverty cycle of many.

Our target population is youth, girls in particular. According to Ricardo Santos’s journal, “Transition to labour market by university students,” 60% of graduate students take two years to be employed, 23% of which resign to jobs unrelated to their field of studies. 

There seems to be  a gap, Mozambicans graduation rates though significantly high  in the big city, do not fill the requirements needed in the workforce market, which registers a high demand for skilled workers. 

To understand their needs we will create a curriculum that can respond to market demands, provide vocational training and broaden their horizons for creativity, and networking through digital libraries. 

The Clarisse Machanguana Foundation can contribute to enhance the quality of youth’s education by  providing new learning materials;  improve information and digital literacy; offer them a world of diversified information through internet access, trigger their minds and capabilities, and encourage a network of synergies and known hows to develop ideas worth sharing :)

Education is a fundamental right for advancement and the key to lead a dignified and productive life. In the village of Marracuene lives depend on farms, our goal is to use digital libraries to broaden opportunities, with information and digital awareness aligned with critical thinking, vocational trained skills, proper business models, and networks to further initiatives and market share.

Connecting a small village with the world with digital libraries might be the only door for many to understand their human rights, for girls in particular to negotiate their way into higher education and their contribution to the country’s economic growth.

Clarisse Machanguana foundation identifies with the pilot phase, because it will be implementing a service that has been successfully implemented in a few African countries with similar challenging characteristics such as Mozambique’s.

We trust that our project will be guided to success because locals are motivated to create change in their communities, and the initial training that SolarSPELL provides are the tools we need to guide a generation of youth to a transformative process that will propel them to a brighter future.

Marracuene village will be the first great example of change that deserving youth are hungry for. This project envisions encompassing three fundamental phases. Train the locals with knowledge and skills to take ownership of the program; Lead formed trainers to train upcoming trainers and facilitators; Create a network platform where graduates from the program will be encouraged to be the driving force, among others, of the circular economy that will sustain the program.