News
iMlango wins Dóchas “Innovative Programme of the Year” Award
11 May 2016
sQuid’s partner, Camara Education, who made the application on behalf of the consortium, were excited and honoured as the iMlango programme was announced as the winner of the Dóchas “Innovative Programme of the Year” Award in Dublin, on Friday 6 May. Presented by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, the Dóchas Awards celebrate innovative and inspiring work by people and organisations in Ireland working for global justice.
iMlango is a pioneering internet based eLearning programme that is supported by the Kenyan Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and delivered by four companies working in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID): sQuid, Camara Education, Avanti Communications and Whizz Education. It provides better life opportunities for 150,000 marginalised students (focusing particularly on girls), in 205 Kenyan primary schools. The programme financially incentivises parents based on girls’ attendance and then uses technology to deliver better educational outcomes in school.
The Innovative Programme of the Year recognises innovative development programmes which are making a sustainable impact. iMlango is innovative in many ways including the following:
- Measurable learning outcomes such as grade improvements in Maths are available in real time by student, class, school and project.
- It is a ground-breaking partnership between public and private sectors with partners as listed above.
- The individualised interactive learning platform enables children to learn at their own speed with content rendered to address their needs.
- Real time attendance data is used to deliver incentivised stipend payments to Kenyan families in a country where one million children do not attend school regularly.
In the words of Josephine Heremine Dullu from Sahajanand Special School, an iMlango school: ‘‘The computers are helping the students very much because now they have become very creative, motivated and fast in learning mathematics – they are doing it very fast these days. They can open the computer themselves, operate them and can interact. Some of them are have even become peer tutors to help the rest of the pupils. In fact they are much more motivated.”
On receiving the award, Camara Education CEO John Fitzsimons said: “Innovation is pervasive in many sectors, however in the International Development sector, we are playing catch up. We need our supporters and sponsors to understand that in order for innovation to flourish, risks need to be taken and we need to embrace failure in order to learn. We congratulate all projects that were nominated and actively encourage further innovation in our sector so we can best serve those with less than us”.
For more information on the iMlango programme, please visit iMlango.com
For more information on Camara Education, please visit camara.org