Over a dozen school children in a school in Eastern Ghana gather around a single computer for an IT literacy lesson.
Like in this school, taking a lesson in IT literacy is a challenge elsewhere across Ghana.
Most schools lack computers and relevant tools for the subject. It means Children in deprived communities rarely get the chance to learn the subject let alone get the needed exposure.
That means they lose out on relevant skills for their own development. Its worst for those with disabilities and that’s where Tech Era, an NGO comes in.
Impact of IT literacy
The group provides IT literacy to less privileged children including persons living with disability.
These children are helped to acquire the needed skills in IT to enable them to compete with children in privileged positions.
Omari says “If you really want to have a future you should look at those who are going to take care of the future and we are living in an age where technology and directing and moving everything forward.
So it is important to start thinking about how do we get these young people to start thinking about how do we use technology to solve problems.”
Omari says the project is executed by teaching “the kids to use smart phones, computers, so they can have access to more quality education. We are introducing programming in technical schools, introducing programming in senior high schools.
Introducing programming in private schools, in public schools, because we want the students to learn it as part of what they do in school and see how they can directly apply what they learn, combine them together to solve problems.”
Omari’s story
Omari started this initiative three years ago while in the University. He says the motivation was because of his own poor background.
His parents couldn’t afford a computer for him. He was adopted by a family that sponsored him to school and gave him access to computer.
Omari works with a team of young volunteers. They take the services to the door steps of children in very deprived communities.
One of the kids that benefitted from his project said “It was very interactive, interesting and very educative. We have been given the opportunity to create things with programs which are mostly known to IT students.
“As I came here I learnt how to wire and to do more programming. So I think this will be a very great thing that has happened to my life,” another kid said.
But Omari says the success story could have been better with the needed funding. He hopes to extend his initiative though to other parts of the continent in the future.
“We are currently working on establishing a chapter of our work in Uganda, and so you will realize that we have plan to even scale up beyond Ghana. Which like raises issues that we need to work fast, you need to work hard” Omari said.
Hopefully Omari’s initiative should bring the dreams of many children to reality. He recently received an award from the Queen of England and such gestures keep him going.
Source: Africafeeds.com
