Education Mali Project #18622

STEM Education in Africa: Changing the Equation

by iNERDE Inc.

STEM Education in Africa: Changing the Equation

Project Report | Nov 7, 2016
iNERDE launches award for Mali's Hero Teachers

By Michael Leventhal | Chief Nerdy Development Officer

Recognizing Inspiring African Teachers

There is a great deal in the works at iNERDE right now. Let's start with iNERDE's newest initiative, APPEX, an award for Mali's most inspiring teachers.

APPEX : African Program for the Promotion of Educator Excellence

To our Malian friends: mark the date December 17! iNERDE is searching for the best teachers in Mali (this year, limited to the region of Bamako). iNERDE will award the prize "Ciwara of Education" to three teachers (from primary, secondary, and university levels) at the APPEX Gala – "A night of elegance and excellence".

While APPEX is a new iNERDE program, it is integral to our core mission to « change the equation » in Africa, starting from its system of education. There are, among Mailain educators, real heros – a lot of real heros – who give everything for their kids and for the future of their country, often in extremely difficult conditions. A country that understands the importance of honoring its best teachers is a country that is on the path to a prosperous future.

For more information on APPEX in French, click here. Go directly to the french-language web form to nominate a Ciwara candidate here. Nominations are open until November 17.

That's not all happening in the next few weeks. Not by a long shot.

Coming Soon ! The Grand Opening of the iNERDE Learning Center in Bamako

The iNERDE team is working around the clock to open our Learning Center and office in our Bamako headquarters. It is located in the little « Latin Quarter » of Faladiè alongside the School of Progress, the Ecole Supérieure of Technology and Management, and the campus of Malian Union for the Blind. The Learning Center will boast a climate-controlled Computer Room with 30 desktop computers and a high-speed DSL connection. The preparation of the Computer Room was only possible thanks to a donation from the just keep livin Foundation. The just keep livin Foundation works for the well-being of young people in the United States. It is very unusual for this organization to fund projects outside the United States but it seems that jkl has a particular soft spot for Mali ! EMC Corporation, TechWriters without Borders and OvaScience are also valued contributors of hardware that will be essential for our Learning Center.

Robots will be the centerpiece of our Learning Center will the creation of iNERDE Robotics Clubs. The Robotics Clubs are the continuation of CodeNERDE, the new programming and robotics bootcamp we launched in the Ntomo Innovation Academy 2016. The Clubs are just the beginning! iNERDE is making plans to train national youth teams to represent Mali in international robotics competitions. We’ll have exciting news to report about this in our next newsletter. Stay tuned!

Meet us at the Bamako Children’s Conference (SEBA), December 22-26

iNERDE will unveil its Learning Center, the Robotics Clubs, and Ntomo Innovation Academy 2017 at the Bamako Children’s Conference (SEBA – Salon de l’Enfance de Bamako), December 22-26. SEBA is a major national conference for and about the children of Mali. It is sponsored by the Malian Ministry for the Promotion of Women, Children and Families, held at the City of Children (La Cité des Enfants) in Bamako. iNERDE is going to greet the world there at its exhibition booth. We are also going to hold workshops for children and their parents to give everyone a preview of the activities planned for Ntomo Innovation Academy 2017 and the Robotics Clubs. Our program for the coming year will be available, our Learning Center will be open to the public and we will begin accepting enrollments. If you have the good fortune to be in bustling Bamako at the end of December, be sure to be there!

Of course, we're deep in planning for next year's Ntomo Innovation Academy camps.

Ntomo Innovation Academy, 2017 Edition

iNERDE’s STEM summer camp program grew in 2016 with the addition of a second camp, CodeNERDE, for older children. Our expansion will continue in 2017 with new learning modules and a range of activities for an even larger range of ages. To be continued …

We can't help looking back with satisfaction at all we accomplished in 2016 - thanks to donors to this project.

Recap Ntomo Innovation Academy, 2016 Edition

We brought the 3rd edition of our educational camps to a successful conclusion, perhaps even a brillant culmination of our best camps ever. We added lots of new lessons to our core camp around computer science, robotics, the internet, and biology. We launched a new camp for advanced students in programming and robotics, CodeNERDE. And we improved the training of our dedicted teachers, getting all of our lesson plans onto an online platform.

You’ll find lots of information about the Ntomo Innovation Academy 2016 here on our website. There are weekly reports and quite a few videos. The videos are in French (and sometimes in the local language, Bambara), but almost all of them have English subtitles.

Finally, you did know that we speak French? You can read this project report in the official language of Mali if you like!

iNERDE does speak French, finally!

For the first time, this report is available in French, alongs with the usual English language version. If you’d like to read it in its sister language, click here.

Given that iNERDE projects take place in french-speaking countries, a little explanation of why this has taken us until now is in order. iNERDE began as an initiative of expatriate Africans studying in the United States. Determined to give back to their home countries, these young university students got together to bring innovative methods of education developed in North America to Africa. However, having become used to using the language of their adopted country, and having, as well, developed a network of English-speaking supporters, iNERDE naturally fell into using English as its working language. We came to recognize that our exclusive use of English made it increasing difficult to be fully connected to the communities we serve. We’re proud to announce that we’ve returned to our roots, with the opening of an office and a permanent learning center in Bamako and that we are, now, officially a bilingual organization.

iNERDE Learning Center, Bamako, Mali

CodeNERDE 1st Graduating Class of Roboticians

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Aug 9, 2016
Robots Come to Mali

By Michael Leventhal | Chief Nerdy Development Officer

The AERobot : Bringing Robotics to Africa

iNERDE's Colonie de Vacance STEM has been rechristened Ntomo Innovation Academy and is full swing in its third year in Mali and just completed its second year in Senegal. This year we've brought robots to Mali! We are using Affordable Education Robots created by Harvard University to help bring robotics education to places like Mali. AERobots are programmed with a visual language called MiniBloq that makes programming accessible to elementary school children with its easy manipulation of program structures, visual clues, and the elimination of syntax problems. Another important plus to the AERobots is that, unlike, for example, code.org, internet access is not required.

Nothing like the iNERDE robotics program has ever been seen in Mali - or most of Africa. Even instruction in programming is rare here ... at the University level. It has certainly never been offered to elementary school students. The kids are "crushing it" - we've formed a young cadre totally turned on to programming. We have two levels of classes. CodeNerde is our new follow-on program designed for the graduates of our main camp who have an basic background in the science needed to study robotics, computer science, and programming. CodeNerde students are getting a good dose of the physics of sensors, the philosophy of robots and artificial intelligence, and all the fundamental programming concepts applicable to robotic control. We have also added robots to our first year program, Ntomo Innovation Academy. All students have gotten an introduction to the AERbot and one of our project teams is preparing for a Hack-A-Thon where they will use basic robotic programming concepts.

iNERDE is getting a lot of attention in Mali. We were invited to lead a scientific exhibition for children on water issues which won us accolades from the President of the National Assembly of Mali and the Minister of Women, Children, and Families. iNERDE graduates were trained by us to serve as guides for the exhibition. We are working on plans to run our program year round, including bringing our unique robotics curriculum directly to the schools in Mali.

iNERDE is firing on all cylinders … except one. This year has been our worst year for fundraising. We are grateful for our wonderful donors that believed in us when we were more inspiration than reality but now that we have established a solid and recognized program in two countries we have encountered, ironically, some falling off of interest in our project from donors outside Africa. We understand that we are just one of many good causes and is natural that our « angels » that helped us get started expect us to develop a sustainable funding base. We are almost there – almost, but not yet. Despite not having enough money to run our camp this summer we decided we had to go forward. And people did step forward to help us. Donors contributed enough funds to pay for 30 full scholarships for poor public school students. Malians stepped forward and contributed over two thousand dollars, at a considerable sacrifice for many of these donors. We are, however, still a little short and are at risk to not be able to fund our last week of camp and acquit all our financial commitments in Mali. Not by much… less than $1500 … but this is a very significant sum in Mali.

We are so grateful for your support and the interest all of our donors have shown in our project and the children of West Africa. If you are able, please do consider making a small donation now to get us to the finish line. We will have significant developments to announce soon with respect to stablizing our funding situation and we promise to continue to do amazing things in West Africa that are really changing the equation.

Katikon Proudly Shows Off our Computer Center

CodeNerde Students Learning Robotics Programming

Young Engineers Overlooking Their Solar Ovens

Assoumaou Leading an Engineering Class

iNERDE's Teaching Team in Mali

Training for the Robotics Hack-A-Thon

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Jun 2, 2016
Opening of permanent office in Mali; Year 3 coming

By Michael Leventhal | Chief Nerdy Development Officer

Katikon, iNERDE's 1st Full-Time Employee in Bamako

Topics

iNERDE opens permanent, year-round office in Bamako, Mali

iNERDE gets ready for a bigger and better YEAR 3!

GlobalGiving Match Day June 15

iNERDE Opens Permanent, Year-Round Office in Bamako, Mali

Chief Nerdy Development Officer Michael Leventhal left his cushy job in Silicon Valley to move to HOT Bamako to run iNERDE's permanent, year-round office there. The story of how he came to this dramatic decision to make a radical career change is told in this video and a tour of his house/iNERDE office and commentary on adjusting to life in Bamako is told here.

Michael is being ably assisted by iNERDE first full-time, permanent employee, Seydou Katikon. Seydou is busy preparing his own video introduction so you should be able to meet him soon. Seydou, who actually goes by his last name, Katikon, has been a social activist for several years, worked as an iNERDE Empowerment Agent in Mali last summer, and, knows Bamako like the back of his hand - and Bamako is not an easy place to figure out! Michael and Katikon make a great team and are hatching big plans to grow iNERDE into a year-round operation.

The Bamako team is lead by Mohamed Sankaré, Vice President of iNERDE Mali. Mohamed helps us to navigate the complex business and governmental landscape of Mali. Mohamed was instrumental in getting us an audience at the new Malian Ministry of Science and Technology. We are very hopeful that a significant partnership will grow out of that, leading to expansion of iNERDE's footprint in Mali. Stay tuned. We also need to get M. Sankaré on video soon, Michael and Katikon shouldn't have all the YouTube fame!

iNERDE Gets Ready for a Bigger and Better YEAR 3!

It hasn't been easy, but here we are, just 6 weeks away from the start of our third summer STEM camp, in Bamako, Mali and in Dakar, Senegal. We've renamed our camps, our program is now called N'tomo Innovation Academy. The previous name, Colonie de Vacances, was confusing to French speakers (maybe even more so to English speakers!) since this is generally understood to mean "sleep-away camp". We also wanted a name that represented Africa - N'tomo is the first level of initiation to adulthood in West African Bambara culture.

This year we have all our partner schools enthusiastically returning and have added new partner schools - in Mali, public school Dianguina Coulibaly and a girl's school, Sainte Thérèse du Fleuve. Our biggest problem now at iNERDE is our success - all our schools want us to expand our program and we have a long list of schools that want to join. Our challenge for the next year is to figure out how to grow sustainably in measure to our resources The good news is that iNERDE is having a huge impact and continued growth is nearly a certainty.

We are introducing a new program this year, CodeNerde. All of our students, parents, and schools have asked us to develop follow-on programs for our graduates - CodeNerde is the first. It's a programming bootcamp using Affordable Education Robots developed at Harvard University and the MiniBloq language. Last year we added Computer Systems and Computer Programming to our standard program so our graduates have the base needed to do CodeNerde this year.

GlobalGiving Match Day June 15

We hope you'll consider marking in your calendar GlobalGiving's Match Day this June 15. GlobalGiving will match 40% of donations to iNERDE, up to $1000, until a total pool of $110,000 in matching funds has been disbursed. If you've been thinking about donating to iNERDE again this would be a good day to follow up on that laudable impulse - and come early before all the matching funds are gone! We've had to scale back our plans for expansion this year ... we had hoped to 2X 2015 but, due to lack of funds, we are only accepting 90 students in the N'tomo Innovation Academy and 50 in CodeNerde. We have had to reduce our allotment for each partner school and turn down some great schools that wanted to work with us. The camp this year begins July 11 so if we can get a surge in donations there is still time to pull more kids in.

We also had to introduce an enrollment fee of $43 for our students to keep up the quality of our program and to meet our budget. We think, overall, that is a good thing that African parents pay for the educational benefits provided to their children. However, the current reality is that if we demanded that parents pay 100% of our costs none but a handful of ultra-elites would participate in our program. Our more reasonable goal is to meet 15% of costs through student fees. In effect, this isn't so different from the US where education and enrichment programs are also typically heavily subsidized. $43 isn't much for a 5-week program and we have had no problem reaching our enrollment targets - but - for the kids in our poorest schools, $43 is, in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line ($1.25/day), an enormous sum. We are therefore offering full scholarships to our kids from Badaloubougou and Dianguina Coulibaly - even though we don't have the funds to cover them. Frankly, we hope you will help. We have a separate, short-term campaign running on GlobalGiving for this purpose. If ensuring that poor kids also a shot a bright future is something that speaks to you, please consider donating to this campaign.

Thank you so much for your support. We are helping the change the equation in Africa and the world thanks to you.

Michael Teaching Computing in Bamako

AERobots Used in CodeNerde Programming Bootcamp

N'Tomo Innovation Academy Logo

Mme Sidibe Talks About Challenges in Poor Schools

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