(12/19) Recap 2021 - New Partners

We’re reviewing all our progress from this year. Nelly started experimenting in March, and Tyler joined to set up computer labs in May. By July, we had really made progress.

In July, we started classes at our fourth school, Saint Mary’s Primary in Mogotio. It was a milestone in a lot of different ways.

The principal of Saint Mary’s, Caleb, has been our most supportive administrator. He embraced our program from day one, and has given us many referrals and recommendations.

Saint Mary’s was the first school (other than Nelly’s Zawadi) to host an “open lab.” When schools went on a short break, we ran an open lab, emulating our experiment in 2019. Open labs are a chance for any local child to use a computer for 20 minutes per day, regardless of what school they go to. Saint Mary’s opened its doors to hundreds of students per day from all over town for our open lab.

Saint Mary’s was (still is) our largest school. With over 1,100 students, we have back-to-back classes of over 40 students every school-day, and still barely reach every student twice per week. This was the first school where we had to really crunch the numbers to build a class schedule.

After Saint Mary’s, things were more streamlined. Installs became faster, hiring was easier because we started a trial period for new hires, and our curriculum began to take shape.