Meeting with District Education Board Secretary

This morning we had a very useful meeting with The District Education Board Secretary and her Standards Officer. We discussed our program and advised them of our progress.

Yesterday teachers agreed to meet once a month to share and solve IT issues. They will report back to us so we can better identify the problems facing them.

We discussed the best way to refurbish the PCs that have already arrived and those in transit. The Standards Officer will allocate them according to school needs.

We explained our next visit, (planned for June), which will be focussed on finding out the impact we have had so far. We will be carrying out interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions. We will also be looking at school statistics.

DEBS has kindly offered to provide transport to do the solar installations next week- dependent on road conditions. We will be installing solar panels in Dibbwi, Nashongo, and Manchamvwa Inland Schools thanks to funding under the Welsh Government Wales for Africa Grant Scheme.

Kolibri

We are excited to be installing Kolibri on the laptops and Raspberry Pi computers we take to Zambia.

What is Kolibri?

Kolibri is a Learning Management System  designed to run on low-power devices, targeting the needs of learners and teachers where there is limited infrastructure. A user can install Kolibri and serve the app on a local network, without an internet connection. Kolibri installations can be linked to one another, so that user data and content can be shared. Users can create content for Kolibri and share it when there is network access to another Kolibri installation or the internet.

At its core, Kolibri is about serving educational content. A typical user (called a Learner) will log in to Kolibri to consume educational content (videos, documents, other multimedia). They can test their understanding of the content by completing exercises and quizzes, with immediate feedback. A user’s activity will be tracked to offer individualized insight (like “next lesson” recommendations), and to allow user data to be synced across different installations — so a Kolibri learner can use his or her credentials on any linked Kolibri installation, for instance on different devices at a school.

Read more about the ideas behind Kolibri here

How to install Kolibri

Find out how to install it here

Annual Report

I’ve just submitted the annual report for Giakonda Solar Schools to the Charities Commission. What a busy and productive year it’s been!

SEP 2017

We made a visit to Siavonga, Southern District, Zambia. Our party consisted of four trustees and three other volunteers.

We used a £3000 grant from The Waterloo Foundation to undertake a solar installation at Kawila Primary School. We also donated 4 laptops, LED lighting, a projector, and a Raspberry Pi computer acting as a hotspot to deliver RACHEL offline learning resources. (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning).
On that same visit we installed a Synology Server with RACHEL in three large schools that had mains power, and held 7 teacher training sessions.
We put a Raspberry Pi server and RACHEL in Siavonga Teachers Resource Centre.

Meanwhile in Swansea: we volunteered to be part of BBC DIYSOS project to set up and equip a supported living house for care leavers. We supplied and installed 12 PCs and laptops there, along with a wifi network.

JAN 2018:

Giakonda Solar Schools received the Hub Cymru Africa (HCA) Innovation Award for our effective solution for supplying learning resources to rural off-grid schools in Zambia.

FEB/MARCH 2018

With a grant of £10000 from HCA we carried out  solar installations in three schools, two of which were only accessible by boat. We gave each school 2 laptops, LED lighting, and a projector, plus the Raspberry Pi with RACHEL.

Training sessions were held at Siavonga High School.
We took part in International Womens’ Day and Youth Day and Howard was invited to address the Engineering Institute of Zambia Conference on the importance of learning computer science. We established good working relations with the new District Education Board Secretary in Siavonga.

We set up a group interested in taking part in a beekeeping project. Members consisted of a local womens’ group, Daughters of Naomi, and teachers from four rural schools.
We visited Monze District to assess needs of Kampuna School so that we could return later in the year to install solar power there. We held a teacher training session and met the Monze District Education Board Secretary. We also met a Bee trainer to arrange for him to support the group in Siavonga.
Before we left Zambia, we held well attended training sessions at Chilanga Primary School(Lusaka) and met Chilanga DEBS.

JUN 2018:

We were given £5000 to be spent on behalf of Friends of Monze.
With this, we installed solar panels in Kampuna and Mwiinga Malimvwa schools, supplying laptops, LED lights, Projectors and Raspberry Pi with RACHEL.

We held 5 training sessions at Lushomo School, Monze Primary School and Monze Resource Centre.
We supplied RACHEL on a Raspberry Pi to 5 other schools, the Teachers’ Resource Centre and the DEBS office.
Our bee trainer, Phillip, delivered three days hands on training and set up hives in Siavonga schools (Kabbila, Kawila, Matuwa, Bbakhasa) and for the Daughters of Naomi.

We met with Registrar of NGOs in Lusaka and began the process of getting registered as international NGO there.

AUG 2018:

The bee trainer made a follow up visit taking another hive for each group. He was pleased to report that there were bees in the hives at 2 locations.

If after reading this you feel like supporting us please donate here.

Training at Monze Resource Centre

We held two training sessions at Monze Resource Centre which were each attended by 18 teachers from local schools. Howard introduced Libre Office Writer and Libre Office Calc which we supplied on donated laptops to three of the more remote schools.

Teachers soon got to grips with the software and feedback from the session was very positive.

Bees Knees!

Rural schools in Zambia are very short of money. With that in mind, Giakonda Solar Schools has started a project to provide an income for Bbakasa, Matuwa, Kabbila and Kawila Schools.

We sent down a beekeeper trainer from Monze to run a three day course. The four schools and a Women’s Group sent representatives, and there were a total of 18 attendees.

Phillip taught them with a mix of classroom learning and hands on experience. They looked at the topbar hives we bought them and melted beeswax to paste inside the hives to attract bees. We are amazed to report that one of the hives already has bees!

We supplied two types of bee suits for the trainee beekeepers to use – one resembling white overalls with a hat and veil attached; the other a long jacket with the hood and veil.

Although African bees have a fiercesome reputation, no-one was frightened off! They are very enthusiastic indeed and have told us they intend to form a cooperative.

We are very excited that this project has got off to such a good start.