Bringing Startups to Rural Schools in Kenya

Our achievements in 2014

In year 2014 we helped to educate 417 members of ICT Clubs at 10 secondary schools from Taita Taveta County in practical computer and business skills. Since 2013, students established and manage together 24 training companies that are registered in Practice Enterprise Network and do business among themselves and students abroad. During the school year, students create brochures, video adverts, blogs, business plans and accounting documents and share them through facebook.com/SoteICT and slideshare.net/soteICT.

Why Sote ICT?

The youth unemployment is a global challenge. In Kenya, 81 percent of workers are employed in the informal sector and jobs for young people are scarce and fragile. The core purpose of Sote ICT is to nurture practical ICT and business skills in young people that will enable them to become qualified and responsible future employees and business owners who support sustainable development of their country. The Swahili word “sote” means everybody and describes our philosophy of inclusion and search for high social returns. We focus on rural schools with no or limited ICT exposure. Our biggest added value is the ability to combine the concepts of student ICT Clubs, practice companies and international student cooperation. And provide continuous support to both educators and students. We don’t believe in magic when it comes to ICT integration and building practical student skills. Therefore we seek to provide continuous mentorship and financial support for ICT Clubs and practice companies. In early 2015 we aim to establish a Sote ICT Hub in Voi for graduates and the wider public.

Our holistic approach combines ICT integration and training with business skills

1. ICT Integration in education: Sote ICT program first helps secondary schools to integrate ICT in their teaching and administration. We donate computers, laptops, projectors, smart boards, cameras among other equipment. We connect schools to internet and install Education management information system (EMIS) and eLearning software. We were the first and repeated customer of a young Kenyan startup JBS, the creators of EMIS that our 10 partner secondary schools use currently. JBS has currently more than 70 schools among customers. We provide trainings on ICT integration in teaching and the use of EMIS. Some trained teachers mentor their colleagues in three neighboring primary schools that received equipment through our smaller ICT projects. So far we integrated ICT in ten secondary and three primary schools in Taita Taveta County.

2. Project-based learning and ICT Clubs: We train secondary teachers in project-based learning and establish ICT Clubs in the second step. Students meet here weekly to work on practical assignments and own projects. Students elect their officials and communicate through video chats with other Kenyan and Slovak schools. Each year we organize joint school competitions; for example in writing CVs and cover letters, essays and promotional videos. Our manual, regular communication and meetings guide teachers in their weekly ICT Club activities. But teachers don’t follow a strictly defined curriculum and are free to be creative and experiment. We support the clubs with mini-grants during the school year and expect teachers to deliver and share quality outputs of students. ICT Club members learn how to create business cards, brochures, videos, blogs and presentations of their practice companies.

3. Certified student practice companies: In the third step, we introduce the concept of training companies as the main activity of ICT Clubs. We encourage schools to create up to three training companies and focus more on quality than quantity. After students agree on the structure of their training companies and create basic documents, we register them in Practice Enterprise Network (PEN). The next goal is to help Kenyan students communicate and trade with other training companies and with their peers abroad. PEN International is based in Germany and currently has 42 member countries. In mentoring practice companies and training teachers, we cooperate with Slovak State Vocational Education Institute and strive together to gain full membership of Kenya in PEN International. The practice companies that prove constant high quality of outputs are referred for PEN certification. Also individual students are able to receive internationally accepted certificate of their “employment” in the practice company as a proof of certain basic skills needed for future employment.

4. Sote ICT Hub to mentor graduates and support startups: Our next big goal is to create a startup hub in Voi town from January 2015 to support our graduate students. We are partnering with iHub Outreach program for the next school year. Since January 2015 we plan to organize two day boot camps for our student members. And in our Sote ICT Hub, we also plan to introduce more advanced technical competences, such as digital fabrication, robotics, coding and incorporation of real startups.

Five years of growth and our future plans

Sote ICT is based on three consecutive projects of Slovak-Kenyan Cooperation for Modern Schools that SlovakAid funded since 2010. The program expanded to five schools in 2012 and ten schools in 2013. In the same year we introduced the concept of practice companies. Pontis Foundation and our partners Kasigau Wildlife Trust have managed the program for five years and we are in the process of registering the Sote ICT as a spin-off NGO.