E3empower Africa

To restore the full Identity of all individuals with Education, Energy and Entreperneurship with a focus on ICT/STEM training. 

Most of Tanzanian students lack access to information (books, internet) and they are also behind in Computer skills for many reasons.   We believe ICT skills would open their mind,  grow their processing skills, and connect to the Information (Knowledge) and their peers worldwide.   We believe that they have lots of potential that are yet to be discovered.   The objectives are: 

- to provide access to the information by providing ICT centers

- to provide fundamentals of ICT to all students, and youth.

- Hands-on experience with STEM (robotics,  Scratch,  Arduino,  app inventor, etc),  HTML,  Python.  

Core Values are Self esteem (discovery),  Integrity, Excellence, Serivce to Community

Team Lead plans various activities and program all year around,  contacts numerous organizations of Youth Org, NGOs, Schools to offer these program:  stem bootcamps, ICT trainings, entrepreneurship training,  computer basic, etc.  

 -- applies various NGos for funding and partnership, stakeholders from domestic and abroad. 

-- secures the funds from public and other partners

 -- conducts weekly meetings with various dept leaders, reviews the lessons and their implementation.

Team Lead is present in the field.  fully dedicated for the projects on-going in the field.  She is fully effective to support 12 -week project sprint.   

- Team lead is experienced in ICT (30+ years) 

- 3 rooms with computer lab with 25 workstations in each with internet.

- 8 full-time staffs (1 accounting, 2 sw engs,  2 marketing, 1 mgr,  2 instructors)

- have experience with research project (worldbank,  Yonsei Univ)

We provide access to information and online books to students/ youth, via digital(w/o Internet),  through online programs with internet.

- Lack of learning materials like Books (textbooks), any related reference materials

- lack of  computers (media) to use the digitized education materials

- lack of Internnet access  to access online educational materials or online program

- current teachers are NOT aware of the online learning materials

-  lack of need to change the mindset and the current school policy. 

We aim to provide necessary learning materials for students;  with using computers to access all kinds of learning materials available online.    

- Provide computer lab with digital library

- Provide computer basic skills,  STEM training with Robotics, Arduino, scratch coding, app inventor,  Programming training (C++, Python, java..),  graphic design, and website development  

- Train Job readiness with ICT skills, and entrepreneurship training

- Digital Library (no need for internet i.e Rachel Plus for  now),  is connected to all PC/laptop devices and it contains good required learning materials such as text books  (from primary to high school),  Wikipedia, Kahn academy,  classical books, English books for early learning, MIT scratch, atlast, health/medicine information without the internet. 

 - with the internet,   use many online program for teaching and learning. 

- STEM Bootcamps - use of groups,  hands-on activities, 

- STEM Fair with  presenter teams  from many schools  and share their applications and technology. 

- Proved that their score for the national exams went up way higher.  

- all students from primary school proceeded to secondary schools, all students from high schools went to Univ.

Formative research  -  with implementing STEM boot camps (700+ students as control group),  300 students (treat group) with STEM training (full week) at compassion international TZ centers.  presurvey before the training and post survey after training was conducted.  Research led by the instructor from Yonsei Univ, in S. Korea( now moved to Seoul National Univ)

Summative research  -with Research group from the World Bank.  target students  were advanced high school Girls (200). they were trained with Scratch on how to bet and negotiate on 2-3 social projects among themselves.   Researcher designed the program to measure their value and came up with scores (again turned into their currency).  STudents actually earned some small money.  it was repeated 3 times and their value/earcning jumped up very high. It was very engaging and they learned a lot. 

- Koica Projects to install infrastructures at a primary school and high schools and provide ICT, some Science topics and English.  The primary school students were out of school students who registered very late and behind the curriculum from 4 different schools.  WE provided 5 month intensive training with ICT, English/MAth and some science.  Their scores went up and  proceeded to secondary.  another high school  (Arusha Girls High) project was to install computer lab with digital library and all girls have shown a big jump in their national exam scores and all proceeded to univ. 

- conducted UNICEF project (IPOSA) to train o ICT/STEM skills to out of school Youth at 3 different cities. their ICT skills brought up their knowledge in ICT and boost up their self-esteem and confidence. 

- All activities, STEM projects and studies have shown a great positive growth and in their academic scores, attitudes and high learning pursuits.  

We  now have more confidence in our approach and  are expanding new lessons for advanced students (with Python, web programming and machine learning, etc). 

We are seeking for more partnership with new skills of AI, robotics, arudino  so the graduates can provide new skillsets to fields of agriculture  (smart farming),  Online delivery systems of all kinds of products/services to community.    

we also conduct entrepreneurship (business startup) competition every year and we will need more mentorship and coaching.   

we have setup a computer lab with digital library at a secondary school in arusha.  they are ready for more training and ICT access for more research and their studies.  

(it can happen at a primary school too. but we are choosing 12 year old middle school students, because they are starting to learn English).  

They are ready to take the national exam for ICT (which is optional subject to them,  the percentage of ICT option  is  less than 1 % of the entire nation) this year so it is ideal that they get a good training from trained teacher.  

We will visit the secondary regularly to conduct the training.  to provide the contents of the national curriculum and have them prepare for the exam.  

we will take F2 students (8th grade) as our treat/control group for one academic year.   there are at least 300 students there. 

  LEAP can take the national exam scores as data for their measurement and/or provide us the tools to take the other relevant data of these learning progress. 

Also we are looking for LEAP to introduce new topics in AI , machine learning and data sciecne to uppoer classes.  

1. Can students learn on their own with given infrastructure?  

True learning happens when students starts to own the questions, and subject matters.  With easy access to the information, they will study deeper and grow their understanding.  Once it happens in one subject, they will learn that it can happen to other topics as well.  

2.  Will group of students with similar interest produce a meaningful application solution with given infrastructure? 

-- The joy of learning will cause sharing with other team.  thus studying and research becomes fun and collective activites including solving some issues in the community.

Desired outputs ; better study designs, strategies on ICT use, frameworks on design thinking for issues, and/or monitoring and evaluation tools

- Better study designs using digital library allowing their own work

- a few cases/scenarios on how to use digital library or internet; i.e how to lookup topics to enhance their learning with visual aids, video clips on science, history and new technology (self-driving auto, etc). 

 - teams for design thinking of various issues  - provide the framework to follow through.  

- growth of students' perspectives on matters, increased interests. (integrated thinking)

- better performance of all subjects (there are 9 subjects - mandated, 2 are optional, 1 being ICT).  there will be school exams and national exams (at the end of academic year).

- monitoring and evaluation tools be designed by LEap Team.

- we will present thses to district Education dept (government) for their collaboration.

 - we will conduct the school teacher's training using these study plans and scenarios to follow.   how to use digital library, various platform to use, how to share  what they learn.  

- we will implement STEM bootCamps at various schools with design thinking frameworks.

- we will call for STEM Fair from all those schools with training for their sharing and network.  

-  we will conduct train Interns and lead them to share their learning.

F4 (secondary students) graduates in early Dec and proceed to high school in July next year.  there is 6 month gap.   we have been training top  graduates from 10 schools, provide  ICT/STEM and coding training for 2 months for free.  then they start teaching other students for the basic and go around their own schools to teach.  This has been working out very well.  they also earn small stipends. 

 F6 (high school) graduates in May and proceeds to college in OCt.  so there is about 4 months ago.  for thos who are not going to military (now it is mandatory) we are doing the same things.

- i wonder if LEAP can think of some strategies of utilizing these gap months so they can learn things fast and catch up with the world.  

- Growth of students' perspectives on matters, increased interests. (integrated thinking).

- High Hope for themselves. 

- They are given with good infrastructures at strategic locations with good coaching and mentoring. 

Students have been isolated for a long time, recieving lessons that were created a long time ago. Cell phones are Not allowed at schools up to high school.  They were not trained to think free, out of box, attempting new things.   It will be very hard to change it all.  

New experiences with STEM projects (as part of LEAP) will cause some change in their thinking, with confidence, new desires for more researches, helping each other, solving some of issues tangibly, thus, they will see changes being made from their efforts. 

We would like them pursue higher learning and tough dreams against all obsctacles on the way by sharing good modeling of true successes in life.   We can create many partnership between Students in US and students in TZ, using online platform.  this is why we need digital platform. 

The community is changing very slowly, policy will change slower but we need to get youth ready with technical skills.  So they will take their initiatives,  show various kinds of solutions to community issues, creating jobs for each other, opening their hometowns to the world, (learning platforms like airB&B, etc).  

Many NGos are working hard with similar objectives.  but it will be good they could work together.   

This movement of changes can start with LEAP.   Fellows, students (both local and abroad) working together will celebrate the positive changes looking ahead.  

i would like to say Thank you for the opportunity to share our goals and visions.  I also want to say thank you for "scratch" !