Solar MP3 players to educate Zambian children

We’ve started 2016 with some exciting developments on our “Solar MP3 players to educate Zambian children” project. When we began working on this high impact initiative more than 12 years ago, the Learning at Taonga Market radio lessons were envisaged as a viable solution for children living in rural areas, with either no access to schools or with parents who could not afford to send them to school. For these highly vulnerable children, one-third of whom were orphaned, Learning at Taonga Market offered the best chance at a quality basic education.

Zambia today is facing tough economic challenges from a collapse in the price of its major export, copper. This has meant mass layoffs in the mining sector, and a related influx of families streaming into the capital city, Lusaka, looking for work. With this has come severe overcrowding in schools, particularly in the lower grades.

In some of the schools we visited in and around Lusaka, primary school classes average more than 100 learners, and some schools run two shifts a day to try and cope with the numbers. Teachers are overloaded; and this is made worse by a lack of basic teaching supplies. Some of the schools are electrified; however, with the high cost of electricity and regular power cuts, they operate mostly without power.

In an effort to try and alleviate the teachers’ burden, the Zambian Ministry of Education has informed us they they require more Lifeplayers to help fill the gap.  It’s already an official Ministry learning educational tool for urban, as well as rural, schools. Given their own budget cut-backs, they’ve appealed to us to fund an urgent supply of 500 Lifeplayers for pre-schools and grade 1-3 classrooms in and around Lusaka. We will be sending the first consignment of Lifeplayers to Lusaka in June, and conducting training teachers how to use and maintain them.  

“This is the exact type of situation that the Lifeplayer was designed for,” said Kristine Pearson, our CEO, who has been visiting Zambia regularly for nearly 20 years.  “It is impossible for a teacher to manage and provide meaningful instruction to classes of this size.  The Lifeplayer will help ease the burden while the children have fun learning.”