By Diana kolek | Diana Kolek
My friends and I went to a few of our public universities in the City of Nairobi for a survey. We were interested to know how many University students went to the University with Basic computer skills and the statistics was shocking. Most of the students who came straight from the village had a difficult time, in fact they say that some students make a lot of money by typing for those who can’t and charging them hefty costs for their assignments not forgetting that this are students who are coming from poor backgrounds. Probably only depending on the grant from the government to pay their school fees. I remember after finishing my high school, I got a job at a supermarket and I used my Money to take myself to a computer school. This was so because I have always had a fascination for gadgets and the more reason why when I started paying my own school fees I changed my major from International Business management to Informational Systems and technology. I go down to my village with my laptop and you see the kind of curiosity the kids have they are so eager to learn and to find out what the computer does. Surely in this digital age, I believe that nobody should be computer illiterate. I visited Rwanda on a couple of times on conference visits and I was privileged to stay at a hosts place. Every morning I would take a taxi to the conference venue in the city Kigali. I was very impressed to see that the program one computer per child is really working out. I was informed that all kids in the public school were given a laptop. The beauty about this is that these laptops have educational content for the kids to learn .Could we also have this in my country? I am open to any suggestions and would be honored to talk to our minister for Education in case we could come up with a form of collaboration. MY main reason for giving this history is to show you where I am coming from and what I would like to do about it. I am very thankful for EVOKE because it has given us an avenue to think about solving our world. No matter how small the project is and it has exposed us to the world to tell our story. Well this is my story and my passion; I would really like to do something about it. I do believe that the next bill gates or Google will come from the bright face of the kids we want to help. We are planning to go to the corporate world to get donations of computers and software that will be useful for the kids. I am currently in negotiations with my University to be the first University to allow students to do there internship on this project instead of going to work In a company. These were our strategies of trying to cut costs. I know that there are some areas where people have been able to cub this illiteracy. If you have any contact that you would like to connect me to or any suggestion or even donations please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment.
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