MwanaRobo

Empowering refugee girls and women through the provision of digital skills, embedded robotics for job creation and self-reliance.

Our solution is to deal with eradicating poverty amongst refugee girls by ensuring economic empowerment through increasing the accessibility to education in growing STEM fields (Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and other digital skills) as well as job opportunities in order to be self-reliant. MwanaRobo equips girls with skills in hardware and software as well as entrepreneurship. 

Girls learn to design and assemble electrical components, and how to program the hardware. They also learn leadership, entrepreneurship, and teamwork as well as communication skills. Girls are taught to become experts and confident when it comes to complicated courses like robotics. 

Hence, MwanaRobo girls act as role models in inspiring other girls who are not confident with technology to break away from low self-esteem and cultural barriers that limit 99% of girls from learning robotics and other challenging technology-based courses.

Apart from intellectual skills, girls spend a lot of time thinking about self and community development that keeps girls from being outcasts in the community because of early pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases but instead meaningfully promoting a girl child’s education and social development.https://www.un.org/en/chronicl...

According to the report given by UNHCR, Dzaleka Refugee Camp is inhabited with 51,415 refugees and asylum seekers as of 31st August 2021, from different countries of origin and different cultures. 

Many refugees are living in poverty and girls are the most vulnerable due to cultural norms against girls and women and the realities of refugee’s education in camps such as Dzaleka Refugee Camp. Only a few girls manage to take their studies further from the secondary school level. This is due to a lack of role models in the STEM field, lack of access to education in the growing fields such as technology causes a lack of job opportunities from outside Malawi as the government of Malawi denies job opportunities for refugees. 

This poverty leads to girls engaging in sexual activities as well as marriages while they are still at a tender age and crucial moment to work on their dreams, hence early pregnancies and contracting sexually transmitted diseases, as most girls and parents or guardians believe that marriage or engaging into sexual relationships is the only way for girls to survive or be economically empowered. 

UNHCR in Dzaleka Refugee Camp has registered more than 1200 early pregnancy and marriage cases. Malawi as a whole has registered more than 100,000 teenage pregnancy cases.

https://reliefweb.int/report/m...

https://www.africanews.com/2020/09/04/teen-pregnancies-rise-in-malawi-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/

MwanaRobo serves women and girls who are refugees. These girls are denied access to higher education and professional courses due to cultural and personal beliefs about girls’ intelligence and capabilities in complicated courses such as technology whereby parents mostly prefer educating a boy child than girls. 

Girls lack job opportunities as firstly the host country does not allow refugees to be employed as well as most people undermine girls when it comes to work that involves a lot of thinking. Their lack of education leads to poverty and living a miserable life.

MwanaRobo gives a chance to girls to go further with their education for free and trains them to be self-confident and navigate through technologies such as robotics and digital skills. MwanaRobo helps them in finding online job opportunities after graduating from the program and promoting them through platforms such as hackathons. In addition, girls are taught entrepreneurship skills so that girls can create their own jobs, small businesses, and become self-reliant.

MwanaRobo team conducted discussions with girls who are school dropouts, secondary school graduates, and university graduates to understand more of their problems on top of what was observed. 

Two team members volunteered at Jesuit Refugee Service(JRS) in partnership with Konexion where they were able to teach computer programming and e-lancing, however, students graduated without getting a chance to have a job online.

Our team conducted a survey and interviews in schools as well as in the community using the ODK application to deeply understand the community problems at large. Then MwanaRobo came about as a solution after an evaluation of problems that refugees and especially girls face.

We have done different activities and movements such as seminars, workshops within the Dzaleka Refugee Camp. We trained more than 100 girls in digital skills and python programming language after being visited by a black girl software engineer from IBM and she also motivated girls into technology. 

In 2020, we had a chance to train over 11 girl teachers and mentors in robotics who became role models in the STEM field. In 2021 MwanaRobo had a girl’s Bootcamp that delivered embedded robotics lessons. More than 30 girls attended the Bootcamp.  In total, we have reached more than 141 refugee girls as of 2021.

This year, we are having two shifts in morning and afternoon classes and each one has a number of 30 girls.

Our curriculums are based on the curriculums developed by the University of Livingstonia, MIT AppInventor as well as Microsoft Digital Literacy course. We provide a variety of technology stacks and courses including digital skills, web development, and Embedded Robotics. 

The web development course is designed to help students who are aspiring in starting their professional career in web development. Students in this course are introduced to the Front-end and backend web technologies that are most in-demand in many industries today, the technologies like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Bootstrap, React JS, SQL, Python, and Django as well as Git and GitHub.

The Embedded Robotics class is focused to introduce the basic electronics and electronic devices used in developing embedded systems (devices like resistors, capacitors, and inductors; we even introduce some other active elements like diodes and transistors). Students get introduced to using different Microcontroller devices like Arduino and Raspberry Pi to build, monitor, and control systems. 

After that, students learn how to collect the information from the environment and how to react to the environment using Sensors and Actuators. The course covers a variety of ranges of sensors including Ultrasonic sensors, Light Controlled sensors, soil moisture sensors, Optical sensors, Electro-Chemical Sensors, Motion sensors, and other types of sensors. Students finally learn how to also build systems that are intelligent by applying computer vision techniques in order to be able to react to the external environment intelligently.

MwanaRobo teaches girls from the Dzaleka Refugee camp and mostly from teenagers going up. Due to a large number of girls, we have 60 girls who are currently taking classes in embedded robotics. Most of these girls attended the Bootcamp that took place last year, 2021. 

The 60 girls are divided into two groups, shift A and shift B. Each of the shifts has 30 girls and two teachers as well as a mentor. These girls will take the course for 6 months then will take another cohort. 

MwanaRobo plans to introduce classes into secondary schools within Dzaleka as well as the surrounding host communities and girls clubs that exist in the Dzaleka Refugee camp. Hence, we plan to reach out to more than 300 girls by next year whereby 70% will be able to find jobs. 

• Expanding the girls' project into the host community and mainly in rural areas where girls are facing similar problems just like refugees. Introduce robotics classes into schools. 
• Forming school clubs that will start teaching girls robotics. Teachers in respective schools will also be trained to make the classes ongoing even without MwanaRobo's presence.
• To train at least 300 refugee girls where 70% have jobs. Reach out to schools and girls clubs within or villages surrounding the Dzaleka Refugee camp.
• To advocate for dissolving the policy that prohibits refugee employment. MwanaRobo will engage in advocacy both online and onsite and expose refugees' capabilities to the government so that they can remove barriers imposed on refugees in terms of employment.
• Have partnership agreements with at least 5 companies or organizations that will employ MwanaRobo graduates. These companies or organizations will either be online or onsite. This will be achieved by searching for companies and making partnerships.
• Introduce the program in different refugee settlements. MwanaRobo will Partner with UNHCR and other implementing partners of UNHCR that focus on education to introduce the MwanaRobo program in different Refugee camps within Africa. 

There is a big number of girls in our community who do not have access to education due to a limited number of students in a class starting from preschool to tertiary education. In order to measure our progress toward our impact goals, we need to take a look at these points that go with UN Sustainable Development Goals such as No poverty(1), Quality Education(4).

• A number of girls did not have access to education in the past.

• How many of our girls managed to learn, gain skills and be able to implement projects in the community.

• A number of learners who successfully be employed in the community or outside Dzaleka.

• Number of students who become role models or inspirations to others in the camp

•  Work on a project in a team, present and evaluate students to understand their level and progress.

• Check the statistics of learners every six months to know the total number.

At the moment, our main barrier is the worldwide Covid pandemic. In 2020, Malawi did not register a lot of cases, however, students went on lockdown for a period of six months. With the new variant of the virus Omicron, there are many restrictions in different public places with a limited number of people.

Additionally, it is difficult to identify local resources available for assembly, manufacturing, and robotics components are very rare and expensive to get in the country, host country policies and guidelines might prevent refugees from engaging in economic and productive activities, shortage of funds to support the program throughout, unstable internet and mobile connection in the refugee settlements, the uncertain status of refugees in operational countries.

Our educational space cannot accommodate every single girl who does not have access to education. Due to cultural barriers, our parents still believe that technological classes are only designed for boys which lead to school dropout due to lack of inspiration in different houses.

The team is composed of five girls from the Dzaleka Refugee camp, four are secondary school graduates and one is still at secondary school. Apart from MwanaRobo, we play other important roles towards change in our refugee camp as well as the host communities. 

Divine Mugisha is an advocate and a president of the Dzaleka Children Parliament and the National Parliament, the children's parliament advocates for refugee children's rights and the dissolution of policies that are unfair on refugee children. Divine also volunteers as a secretary at Ubuntu Nation Project, Ubuntu’s mission is to offer high quality of education to refugees and other children from the surrounding communities who are living in extreme poverty. 

Ines works at Konexio as a facilitator, coordinator at ADAI Circle, and Manager at MwanaRobo. Et'oo, Ongwa, and Ilhan are representatives of Naweza, a project that is empowering girls in education and other women's rights. We are confident in using technology hence we also act as role models in our communities. 

The team was firstly trained in 2019 by an engineer from IBM, where we were motivated and acquired skills in python. Then in 2020, we had detailed classes in robotics. The team led a girl’s embedded robotics Bootcamp in 2021, where the team displayed great capabilities in inspiring as well as teaching girls.

MwanaRobo Project is a project under Africa Deep in AI Circle. Hence, ADAI provides infrastructure and learning equipment, and also trained girls who are teachers and mentors.

MwanaRobo project aims to empower refugee girls and women through the provision of digital skills and embedded robotics for job creation and self-reliance. Our project is a good fit for this prize because it deals with eradicating poverty amongst refugee girls by ensuring economic empowerment through increasing the accessibility to education in growing STEM fields (Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and other digital skills) as well as job opportunities in order to be self-reliant.

MwanaRobo equips girls with skills in hardware and software as well as entrepreneurship and it gives a chance to girls to go further with their education for free and trains them to be self-confident and navigate through technologies such as robotics and digital skills. They learn to design and assemble electrical components, and how to program the hardware. For the new girl’s computer users, they are taught from the basics of computers to the advanced level. We also provide leadership, entrepreneurship, and teamwork as well as communication skills.

Apart from intellectual skills, girls spend a lot of time thinking about self and community development that keeps girls from being outcasts in the community because of early pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases but instead meaningfully promoting a girl child’s education and social development. This prize will help us to expand the program to different schools in the Dzaleka refugee camp and reach our goals of 300 girls and women by the end of 2022.

This is the link for the project: http://adaicircle.com/mwanarob...

MwanaRobo project is a good fit for this prize because it aims to eradicate poverty among girls and women by increasing access to high-quality training and skills in modern and advanced technologies. It seeks to provide skills that are relevant and in-demand in the modern workforce all across the world. We believe that girls and women in the Dzaleka settlement are the next technology masters.

MwanaRobo empowers refugee girls and women with STEM knowledge and digital skills to unlock access to new technology, job creation, and new education pathways, generating not only knowledge throughout the community, but confidence and self-sufficiency to tackle their community’s challenges. 

As a refugee-led project, with several of our team members impacted by forced displacement, we acutely understand the needs and challenges of these communities, and the power of education in the field of embedded robotics, web development to unlock new futures. We are on a growth stage of our projects and these applications and prize funding to support further our activities within these local refugee communities would help us to better reach our goals while creating opportunities for girls and women. 

This is the link for the project: http://adaicircle.com/mwanarob...