Vodafone Group Plc Launch of 'Instant Schools for Africa'
May 03 2016 - 3:00AM
RNS Non-Regulatory
TIDMVOD
Vodafone Group Plc
03 May 2016
3 May 2016
Vodafone Foundation launches 'Instant Schools For Africa' to
bring advanced
educational resources to millions of young Africans
The Vodafone Foundation and Vodafone today announced the launch
of one of the largest philanthropic programmes in the Vodafone
Foundation's 25-year history. The Instant Schools For Africa
initiative will launch this autumn, providing millions of young
people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho,
Mozambique and Tanzania with free access to online learning
materials developed in conjunction with Learning Equality*- a
leading not-for-profit provider of open-source educational
technology solutions - and with education partners, ministries of
education and local education experts in each country. A similar
initiative was recently launched by Vodafone's South African
subsidiary Vodacom which worked with the Department of Basic
Education to develop a free education portal - Vodacom e-school -
that supports the national curriculum.
The educational resources provided under the Instant Schools For
Africa programme will include subjects such as maths and science,
providing millions of children and young people in seven countries
with access to educational materials - from primary through to
advanced high school level - comparable in quality, range and depth
to those available in schools in the developed world. The materials
- curated to align with local standards - will also include content
designed for children who do not benefit from traditional
schooling: UNESCO research found that 59 million children aged six
to 11 were out of school in 2013, with 30 million of those children
living in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Conventional teaching materials such as textbooks, reference
books, past examination papers, assessment worksheets and classroom
aids are prohibitively expensive for many African schools. Digital
learning materials provided via mobile networks - with basic
tablets for pupils and a laptop and projector for educators - offer
a cost-effective alternative and can be updated instantly to ensure
pupils receive the very latest information and insights in the
classroom and at home.
Children, young people, educators and others who are customers
of Vodafone or its African subsidiaries will not incur any mobile
data charges when accessing the Instant Schools for Africa
educational resources. The Vodafone Foundation and Vodafone will
engage with the other major mobile operators in the countries
involved to encourage other providers to adopt a similar
non-commercial approach in order to stimulate widespread adoption
of what, for many young people, will be life-enhancing
opportunities to learn and gain new skills.
The Instant Schools For Africa programme represents a
significant expansion of the Vodafone Foundation's ongoing mission
to use digital and mobile technologies to bring critical
educational resources to the people who need them most. In March
2015, the Vodafone Foundation announced the creation of the Instant
Classroom 'digital school in a box' - a portable case containing
equipment to enable tablet-based teaching in schools where
electricity and internet connectivity are unreliable or
non-existent. The Instant Classroom is being deployed in
partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees'
(UNHCR) Innovation and Education units to schools in refugee
settlements in Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of
Congo. It is estimated that the Vodafone Foundation's work in
refugee settlements will benefit at least 62,000 children and young
people by the end of 2016 and the Foundation is targeting up to
three million children and young people in refugee settlements by
2020.
Vodafone Foundation Director Andrew Dunnett, said: "Education is
a powerful antidote to poverty. Children and young people in some
of the poorest countries on earth are desperate to learn but
parents, teachers and other educators often lack both means and
materials to teach them. Mobile and digital changes everything. Our
Instant Schools For Africa programme will put a wide range of
advanced learning materials - tailored for each local language and
culture - into classrooms everywhere, from city slums to remote
villages. We believe Instant Schools For Africa could transform the
life chances for very large numbers of young people."
- ends -
For further information
Vodafone Group Media Relations:
www.vodafone.com/media/contact
Note to editors
*Learning Equality optimises all educational resources so that
content can be delivered efficiently. Videos are optimised to be
low bitrate, the web pages created by Learning Equality are
configured to work over low-bandwidth data connections and the
education modules can easily be stored on mobile devices.
Educational content hosted by Learning Equality is designed for
schools that do not have internet access but have their own local
area network. The content is hosted within Vodafone's core network
rather than on third-party servers via the internet which optimises
the speed and reliability of connection. Pupils, teachers, parents
and other educators simply need a data connection to the Vodafone
network to access the materials. Vodafone and Learning Equality
will provide other mobile operators with the technical
specifications required to extend the benefits of this
philanthropic programme to the largest possible number of
beneficiaries.
Pictures of Vodafone Foundation Instant Classroom can be
downloaded here:
https://www.flickr.com/x/t/0093009/gp/vodafonegroup/dpgww9/
A short film which shows the Instant Classroom equipment being
set up can be viewed here:
http://youtu.be/DVnoXyBsJI8
About Vodafone Foundation
The Vodafone Foundation's Connecting for Good programme combines
Vodafone's charitable giving and technology to make a difference in
the world. Globally, the Vodafone Foundation supports projects that
are focused on delivering public benefit through the use of mobile
technology across the areas of health, education and disaster
relief. The Vodafone Foundation invests in the communities in which
Vodafone operates and is at the centre of a network of global and
local social investment programmes. The Vodafone Foundation is an
independent charity, registered with the Charity Commission of
England and Wales with registered number 1089625.
About Learning Equality
Learning Equality www.learningequality.org is committed to
enabling every person in the world to achieve a quality basic
education, through supporting the creation and distribution of open
educational resources, and facilitating their use inside and
outside of classrooms around the world. They developed KA Lite, an
open-source platform for viewing and interacting with Khan Academy
videos and exercises, which can be used even when no Internet is
available. Students can connect to the server from within a
classroom or other space, on a laptop, tablet, or desktop computer,
or it can be installed directly on a learner's computer for
portable access. KA Lite has already been installed in over 160
countries, reaching an estimated 2.1 million learners, in contexts
as varied as rural schools, orphanages, community centers, refugee
camps, prisons, and homes.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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