STEM Education in Africa: Changing the Equation

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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.