Age
17
Country of Residence
Kenya
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
I conceived the idea of “MaaTech Girl” in 2020 when my parents relocated to Kajiado County for work. Kajiado is categorized as an Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) in Kenya, inhabited by the highly underserved Maasai pastoralist Community. Following the relocation, I was enrolled at a local primary school where I interacted with the Maasai girls both in school and within the community. Around that period, there were heightened COVID-19 related restrictions and schools were increasingly leveraging on digital platforms for learning. While I could access online lessons and assignments, many of my Maasai friends, especially girls, could not access due to lack of digital skills, devices and connectivity, placing them at a greater risk of poor performance, dropping out of school and being forced into early marriage, a situation that deeply pained me. I approached my parents to help create a small learning space in our house where I could be attending online learning with some of the girls within our community. They agreed and we started meeting and engaging in digital literacy and learning for three days a week. Leveraging on my own digital skills, I trained 15 Maasai girls as peer digital trainers, creating a model for girls to learn and support each other. Through the initiative, many maasai girls remained in schools and accessed opportunities that shaped their futures.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
At the moment am working with local stakeholders such as parents, teachers, religious and cultural leaders, students in higher learning institutions, and my organization (Women Promotion Centre) in encouraging them to support my work. For wider sharing of my work and the problem am solving of digital illiteracy among the maasai girls, i will create and strengthen my online presense including a dedicated webpage, and social media platforms which will be accessed around the world.
How many people are on your team?
7
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Since its establishment in 2020, the Maatech Girl initiative has been able to achive the following; 1. Increased access to digital learning opportunities for Maasai girls by reaching 560 girls directly and around 2800 children and youth indirectly. 2. Improved digital literacy and basic computer skills among children and youth in Kajiado county. 3. Improved access to educational content and online learning platforms for improved academic performance. 4. Enhanced digital inclusion and future employability among Maasai girls who initially had little or no access to computers, internet services, and digital learning tools
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Growth (We’ve moved past the very first activities and are beginning to have consistent weekly or monthly impact)
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
The MaaTech Girl is a project initiated to promote digital literacy among the historically marginalized pastoralist Maasai girls in Kajiado County.
Project title
MaaTech Girl
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Kajiado is a historically marginalized remote rural county inhabited largely by the Maasai semi-nomadic pastoralist communities. Strong patriarchal norms, the deep rooted cultures of female genital mutilation (FGM), forced underage marriage for girls, and lack of willingness to investment in girls’ education are some of the harmful practices that continue to undermine Maasai girls’ development. These challenges are compounded by limited digital infrastructure, lack of access to appropriate devices and digital literacy, leaving Maasai girls excluded from the opportunities provided by technology. Empowering Maasai girls digitally matters to me because I have personally witnessed talented girls denied equal opportunity to participate in digital learning simply because they lacked the skills, devices and connectivity. While technology is revolutionizing the world by enabling many young people to learn, access information, generate income, express themselves and participate in civic life, many girls in Kajiado county continue to be disproportionately affected, remaining on the wrong side of the digital divide. MaaTech Girl was born from my strong belief that empowering marginalized and underserved girls with digital skills has the ability to unlock their potential and pathway to opportunities, thus, contributing to the positive transformation of their families and communities.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
N/A
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
To ensure the growth of my project over the next year, I plan to achieve the following milestones; 1. Increase the number of ICT kiosks from the current 5 to 7. 2. Increase the number of schools participating in our School ICT outreach program from the current 10 schools to 15 schools. 3. To train 50 trainers in additional ICT topics in emerging technologies such as ethical use of AI, coding and Robotics. 4. Creating and strengthening the online presense of MaaTech Girl innovation
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
The MaaTech Girl was designed to help bridge the digital divide among the historically marginalized and underserved communities in Kenya and Africa at large by operating independent from any established infrastructure. The kiosks are designed for deployment in any location in remote settings, from the farms in the pastoralist villages to the desert. By using solar panels and Safaricom internet access through mobil modem, the innovation is able to reach people in need of ICT infrastructure. The innovation is unique in the sense that, in addition to reaching the underserved with digital literacy, the innovation structures (Kiosks) are build to adapt to the community's needs. Despite the challenge of grid power coverage, the pastoralist communities are also faced with the unavailability of permanent structures. The traditional houses called “Manyattas” are raised using mixtures of natural materials including wooden sticks, mud, cow dung, grass, reeds, and ash. In the absence of permanent buildings and limited sustainable building materials, it makes it difficult to get a secure and convenient structure for ICT learning. To address this challenge, our model" kiosks" are made of strong Iron-sheets and metals that are easily transportable, structurally sound and able to withstand challenging environments. The structure has both permanence and sustainability and can be easily disassembled in case of conflict situations, political instabilities and adaptable to the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the maasai community.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
The MaaTech Girl initiative is an integrated digital literacy project that involves two main components, namely; 1. The development of Solar Powered ICT (digital) Kiosks; and 2. School ICT Outreach Program. 1. Development of Solar-powered ICT (digital) kiosks: Through the support from well-wishers and Women Promotion Centre, I have established 5 solar-powered ICT centres (Kiosks) in remote rural areas within Kiajiado County where youth, especially girls, access internet services, digital learning resources, and build ICT skills such as coding through hand-on coaching . Due to lack of electricity in remote rural settings, the kiosks use solar energy in powering the ICT equipment and lighting. 2. School ICT Outreach Program: It is hard to imagine that while most schools in Kenya, especially those in urban areas, have digital infrastructure, they are expected to compete with learners from remote areas where children still learn manually in the open, under tree shades. I came up with this program to help in creating awareness about the unmet ICT needs in rural public schools. In addition to creating awareness, the program also involves holding ICT bootcamps for girls within public schools, and training selected teachers on basic ICT skills so that they can pass the knowledge acquired to learners.
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
The MaaTech Girl innovation has a small team of 7 people who serve as volunteers. The team includes four Kiosk operators with ICT skills who are responsible for day-to-day running of the Kiosks including ensuring the availability of digital services and delivering digital skills to those who need, two team members are responsible for the school outreach program. Finally, am the founder and vision bearer of the innovation and responsible for coordinating all the activities.
