Powering Potential for Zambian Schools
We have a large number of PCs and laptops ready to be donated to schools in Zambia and those in need in Swansea. Now it’s a matter of sponsors wanted to help us refurbish them with new hard drives.
£50 will provide a PC or laptop hard drive. We will advertise your donation on social media and keep you updated with news from the recipient. Donate here.
With just three weeks before we leave for Zambia, we’re busy getting kit set up.
We are pre-installing RACHEL on five Raspberry Pi Computers and two or three Synology DiskStations. This will provide world-class offline learning resources to approximately 3000 pupils and teachers in rural schools.
We are also checking over some laptops and access points and working on the training courses we will run. Busy times!
We are extremely grateful for a very generous donation of surplus PCs and laptops (minus their hard drives unfortunately). We intend to refurbish them and pass them on to schools in Zambia and also to disadvantaged families in Swansea.
We will put in new hard drives and instal a new operating system and LibreOffice software. They will be used in conjunction with RACHEL as a great learning resource.
Are there any kind souls out there who can help us with drives? 120GB would be OK though the bigger, the better. If so contact info@giakonda.org.uk
Category : News , solarpower , zambia
I’ve finally booked the flights today so that’s good progress with preparations for our September trip to Siavonga, Zambia! It’s exciting to have Sian, Luke and Malcolm coming along with us to share their skills and expertise. We’re very grateful to them for volunteering their time and funding their own travel as we do.
We’ve set ourselves a challenging schedule with five teacher training days, two solar panel installations, and three installations of RACHEL elearning resource on Synology Diskstation.
So, at the end of our visit we hope to have achieved the following if funds allow:
1) One additional rural Primary School will have solar power for LED lights, a Raspberry Pi distributing RACHEL wirelessly and four laptops for teachers to access the resource. Read more about RACHEL here.
2) Siavonga Nutrition Group (SNG) will have solar power for women’s groups to use their sewing machines.
3) Three big secondary schools with power, will be able to access RACHEL from Synology Diskstations.
4) SNG will have a Raspberry Pi allowing their office to be a hotspot for local children to access learning resources.
5) A large primary school will have wireless access over its whole site via additional access points.
6) A local Resource centre will have the resources of RACHEL via Raspberry Pi to make it a learning hub for the local community.
7) We will train teachers in hardware maintenance, network security, programming with Raspberry Pi, using the RACHEL resources and Maths and English topics for primary children.
8) Finally, if possible, we hope to supply Raspberry Pi servers to four other primary schools.
So, if you would like to contribute to any of our expenses, this is an approximate idea of costs, although any donation is welcome.
Raspberry Pi £36
Raspberry Pi server £80
Hard drive for Synology Diskstation £60
Ex demo Synology Diskstation from £200
We always welcome donations of routers, access points and working laptops/ tablets.
Category : News
On Thursday May 25th Giakonda Solar Schools attended Africa Day 2017 at the Senedd Cardiff. We were invited by Hub Cymru Africa to showcase our project and meet our Assembly Members and other Welsh-based charities working in Africa.
It was an interesting and enjoyable day, thanks in part to the entertainment provided by Zim Voices Choir.
During the proceedings we held a minute’s silence to remember the people killed by the recent terrorist bombing in Manchester.
In 2010 a group of 29 Scouts from Surry and Berkshire travelled to Katalumba School in Siavonga to complete the building of three classrooms in conjunction with some Zambian Scouts. It was the culmination of two years hard work, fundraising and training organised by Jools Sore from Andover. The new centre made a huge difference to the lives of the local children, who previously had to walk up to 10 km through the bush.
Read about their experiences here and here
One of their number, Sarah, got in touch after seeing this website asking about how things are progressing. The art work on the wall still brightens up the classroom.
The swings are still there although the school is being extended.
Category : News
Thanks to a customer donation, a D-Link router is en route to a school in Mutende, Northern Zambia where it will be used in conjunction with a Raspberry Pi to deliver off-line learning resources.
The resources comprise RACHEL and Khan Academy. RACHEL stands for Rural Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning and the software is freely available from http://worldpossible.org/
Someone’s discarded IT equipment has been put to a great new use and will enable a large number of pupils to access world-class learning materials.
We certainly believe that when it comes to giving Every Little Helps.
Since January, clients and visitors coming into our Swansea Offices have been donating odd coins ( and in some cases the odd note) to Giakonda Solar Schools. Thanks to this, I have been able to bank another £45 which equals another Raspberry Pi and cool lego case for a rural school in Zambia.
You can donate to us online too if you like what we do.
Category : News
This is a plea for your donations please!
Over the last three years we have worked with 16 different schools in Siavonga in Southern Province of Zambia, providing equipment and training. Some of the schools have no grid power so the obvious solution was for us to install solar panels.
We have received grants from Hub Cymru Africa, University of Wales Trinity St David’s and S&C Electric Europe which we have used to buy solar equipment and Raspberry Pi computers.
In addition we have supplied PCs, laptops, routers and switches, some of which were donated by businesses and private individuals. A little money goes a long way in Zambia and laptops and tablets we might cast aside can be put to good use in the Siavonga schools.
Synology have donated two ex-demo DiskStation NAS servers which we set up to deliver world-class off-line learning resources in two large schools.
SolarPlants donated eight solar panels, enough to equip four rural schools with power for running Raspberry Pi computers, charging phones and LED lighting.
We organise fundraising events which are great fun and involve a lot of drumming, wild dancing and African food!
But we are always looking for your donations too.
You can help by :
donating your unwanted IT equipment
Visiting our donations page here
or
If you shop online regularly, you can earn donations for us at no cost to yourself.
Check out https://www.giakonda.org.uk/easyfundraising-giakonda-solar-schools/
We’ve just bought a few Raspberry Pi Zero W to see if they would be an even more cost effective solution for the schools in Siavonga Zambia.
It now boasts wireless LAN and Bluetooth on board. Here’s the full feature list :