Digital Literacy Tanzania, United Republic of Project #30346

Help Tanzanian Youth Make Tech to Help Themselves

by Twende

Project Report | Mar 4, 2020
STARTING 2020 WITH A HIT!

By John Nzira | Administrator

Motor powered vegetable cutter

The last 3 months have gone too fast with its bits of challenges but Twende family has been able to work hand in hand with different schools and partners as always to reach its s goal of sparking innovation in young minds, the workshop has been filled with smiles from students across Arusha.

So far we have worked with almost 200+ people through the programs that are happening at Twende including LED Outreach, Build its and Creative Capacity Building (CCB). Among these programs, participants were engaged in making different kinds of stuff for their daily use for example students got to make rubber squeezers and the blackboard dusters to be used by their schools instead of school buying them.

We have reached 105 students through LED outreach, where we got to spread the word of Twende and let them light the LED and get to review Ohms law practically as many schools especially public schools don’t have laboratories and tools/materials for practical sessions. Then interested students get to sign in for other Twende programs particularly Build It which makes the total of 65 who come to Twende to build different things including blackboard dusters, rubber squeezer and other electronic tools like flashlights, solar phone charger and many others.

We also worked with groups of street youths and women groups (50 in total) through Creative Capacity Building (CCB) program where they get through design cycle for three days, then get to list several challenges they wanted to work out solutions for the betterness of their lives in the near future. Some of the projects out of this include vegetable cutting machine, blackboard chalk mould, liquid soap mixer, wax pressing machine, coconut oil extractor, food warmer and transporter container etc.

As we also offer a working space and we received people with their innovative project ideas who wanted to prototype them. For example, currently, we are working with students from Tumaini Senior Sec School who are working on the electric generator which will collect power from motorbikes and store to be used for other purposes example lighting. They get to apply for the competition organized by the Government so they asked for support in terms of working space, Technical, presentation tips.

We also received visitors and volunteers/interns who came for different purposes like learning, experience sharing, knowing and understanding what Twende does and also helping Twende to grow further in one way or another.

Conclusion: it has been a fruitful Quarter, reaching out to students and communities like never before, partnering with different organizations and schools such as Aga Khan University, Fues Foundation Mwandet Secondary School and Senda Success who also promised to work with us on holiday and weekend basis.

Conversion of mechanical into electrical energy

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Dec 6, 2019
ENDING THE YEAR WITH A BANG!

By John Nzira | Administrator

Powder soap being tested after testing the machine

Hello Good People!

The year is coming to an end and Twende has been running several activities from hosting visitors to running workshops and continuously building strong partnerships.

We had a great time with the Jamii Tech Program graduates (Youths from Universities and the communities) whose final presentation was done by early October, whereby nearby communities and Partner organizations graced us with their presence. This team has been so great since it comprised of hard-working, self-motivated students who cooperated well with us as well as the communities they worked with to achieve the goal of solving the problems faced by the specific community. The successful projects being made, tested and taken to the community include the Powder soap mixer, Dough maker, Dish Washer and the Automatic rice planter. Currently, the machines are being used by the community then follow-up is about to start to see how and where to help more for better functioning of the prototypes then develop them to the products.

What’s special about this year’s program is that, even after the program ended, one of the participants returned with interesting project ideas which he managed to make. The functioning prototypes include Automatic toilet hand washer and door opener, a manual simulation of car-driving games and a dough-kneading machine which is a supplement to the dough making machine.

In terms of progress, there is fabrication done by some of our innovators including Manure spreader, multipurpose wheelchair and the avocado oil extracting machine. This was made possible by the support provided in terms of funds by the Commission of Science and Technology (COSTECH) in Tanzania which seeks to support them in their final prototype stage for them to get feedback from the community and finally hit the market.

Our technical team has been working with individual workshop users who come to seek for technical advice and the maker space to practice their project ideas. We received several students who had different ideas and some have done some projects before so they have presented their ideas to receive advice which enlightened them to do more. One of the youths who has been using the maker space and received advice was working on the Simple carrot harvester and washing device of which he managed to make the prototype and he is still working to develop the prototype further.

We managed to run a build-it workshop with some of the school kids who came for a school tour, where they got to learn more of what we do and got the opportunity to make simple build-it items that relate to their class topics and other technical stuff like soldering, measuring, cutting as well as other skills like recycling. The items made include flashlights, blackboard dusters, and rubber squeezers together with other fun projects like a fun toy gun made by one student which made him proud of the achievement that motivated other kids to try things too.

In other news, we had a prestigious visit from Deutsche Welle who featured our most recent activities including one of our successful inventors who is brining impact to his local community through local innovation.

Twende is currently conducting holiday programs which will involve a lot of youths (Youth camps) and kids from different schools who will participate in Creative Capacity Building and Build-it workshops for the kids. We have registered several numbers of up to 40 youths for the programs officially kick off on the 10^th of December, the team is setting up everything in place ready to start the program and end the year with a bang.

Twende loves bringing impact to the local community. We love that you continue to support us and keep track of what we are up to. Do sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.

Remember, we do this because you help us. Thank you very much for your continous support!

Manure spreader making process

Build-it workshop for a Maize Sheller Device

Links:

Here is our DW Feature

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Sep 10, 2019
JTP, CCBs,Programming. Yaay! We nailed it!

By John Nzira | Administrator

Nanenane Exhibitions

Hey Twende Folks!

Wow, the third quarter is almost over! And we have had numerous activities here at Twende. We had the pleasure to reach out to the community and host different guests who had different life-changing projects. We can’t thank you enough for the support to reach our goals.

This third quarter was filled with a wide range of activities like Creative Capacity Building (CCB) training, build-it workshops, the Annual Agriculture Show (nanenane) and the Jamii (community) Technology Program.

In our CCB and Build-it workshops, we have successfully worked with our 2 amazing interns who incorporated Arduino technology in our training where we reached out to 60 students of 3 different schools where both students and teachers took part in this incredible training program. The participants learned how to use electronic tools like resistors, breadboard, jumping wires, cables, Arduino and laptops just so they can learn how to program computers into doing what you want them to do and to see if they can get more interested in programming lessons.

In August we had the opportunity to reach out to many people through the Nanenane exhibitions. Nanenane day on Aug 8 every year celebrates the important contribution of farmers to the Tanzanian economy.

This year we managed to showcase our innovations just outside our premises where we had a tent and innovations outside to display. The aim of showcasing our products is to be able to build a larger network of potential clients and innovators who will keep working with us to create more technologies to solve community challenges.

It is also one of the opportunities we have to market Twende’s programs and activities to new people. Creating awareness on how technology could change more lives and make such a huge difference in it. We talked to students of various schools, community members and telling them how Twende could work with them while solving their problems in the society through local innovation.

The Jamii Tech Program brings local University students as well as international youth together with a specific community, and together they team up to identify a specific problem within that community that they can solve together using their innovative ideas and abilities. These innovative technologies are created from scratch in hope to go through many prototype phases and finally a finished product that can be used by the community it was created to help.

This year, the program started on the 12^th of August and it includes 8 students from Tanzanian Universities who will be trained and work on projects for 8 weeks and 2 communities to work together with the students for one week. These communities include 2 Groups which make a total of 15 members. So far we are in the fifth week of the program where students are working on their prototypes and are getting guidance from our amazing team of trainers and staff before presenting them to the community members for feedback.

Twende loves bringing impact to the local community. In the next few months, we will have more creative capacity building programs and continue to follow up on how individual projects are doing as well as continue to work on our new project. We love that you continue to support us and keep track of what we are up to. Do sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.

Remember, we do this because you help us. Thank you very much for your continuous support!

JTP students demonstrating their prototype

Our programming interns working with our trainer

Links:

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