The big day finally arrived. Who was to be left out? Students from ten Sote Ict sponsored schools arrived to show their entrepreneurial skills. Important guest like Taita Taveta County Governor Hon. John Mtuta Mruttu, the Slovak-Kenya Ambassador His Excellency Mr. Michal Mlynar with his family and Miss Tourism Taita Taveta were not left behind amid principals and teachers from the ten schools.

It was a busy day with students, teachers, guests and the jurors moving up and down the stalls taking a look at what the various student companies presented. It was quiet tricky for the jurors to decide which companies were to carry the day since the competition was stiff as all the companies had good ideas and ways of approach. The students on the other hand had a hard time since they did not know who the jurors was and had to give their best at all the times.

During the lunch break students took their lunch while the Ambassador, His Excellency the Governor, Miss Tourisim Taita Taveta and some of the Sote Ict Officials had a small chat over lunch.

After lunch it was time to hear the speeches and everyone gathered in the presentation hall. David Ogiga gave the opening speech and welcomed Miss Tourism Taita Taveta who gave an amazing speech. Hon. John Mruttu then took his turn and gave an outstanding speech appreciating the students efforts. He promised to support the Sote Ict Foundation and offered a grand prize of ksh 10,000 to InfoTech Company who shot a video of the whole event.

His Excellency  the Ambassador of  Slovak-Kenya then took the stage and gave out a remarkable speech and thanked everyone for their input. He also thanked the Slovak Ministry of Foreign affairs for their support altogether with the Pontis Foundation. Though his term of service in Kenya will be ending later on this year, he promised to keep in touch. Finally Ivka Ulicna  from Pontis Foundation gave her speech and awarded the best companies and individuals who took home: Certificates, trophies and other prizes.

Bishop Lemera from Mwakitawa Sec School closed the ceremony with a short prayer and everyone departed with beautiful memories engraved forever in their minds.

To view the amazing photos of the day:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/131873900@N08

 Blog by Kelvin Woresha Mwangemi

Find responsible members: Clubs can not start with only one person. There are positions needing to be filled with responsible students, defined as loyal, intelligent, and hardworking. A club containing student like this will definitely succeed. Also starting to talk with the responsible student will help in the planning of the club so that one will not have to do it by oneself beforehand. Club leaders should be democratically elected by club members. You can crown club leaders with identification badges as a tradition of most school leadership style.

Find a club adviser/Patron/Mentor. A club adviser/ patron is not a teacher that is supposed to babysit a club; they are a trusted mentor. They also need to possess an interest in the club's activity or goal. So find the perfect one that would take an interest in the club. So that they would love to be involved making the club more active and prosperous.

Spread the word to the school administration. Even with the best team, you still need approval and the justification of the club by the student and administration. Let everyone know about the club activity, objectives, mission and vision.  Carry out club dissemination at the assembly and student baraza. School administrators who have not been well informed on the club activities may not support you club. Invite the Principal’s in your club activities.    

Plan out how the club will run. At the beginning of the term, come up with a work plan. Let the school and the club sponsor approve it. Involve the student in work plan development  

Talk with the other club officials. Make sure there is a high level of communication between the club officials. Without good communication, there will be infinitely many problems occurring. Associating with others beforehand makes it easy for an alternative or a solution.

Convince others to join. Once the club is running, all of the work rest in the officials of the club hands. Keep convincing other students to join, since clubs are dynamics (others come and others go).  Without members it is not considered a club, it is good to get people to join if they have a motive to join your club.

Stay organized. Now that a club has started, it is not over yet. All of the hard parts may have passed, but there is still the maintenance of the club, and with low maintenance the club will later on be rejected and disbanded. Have plenty of activities that encourage greater participation and involvement of Members!

Motivate Members: Develop a strategy that motivates members to join and to be retained in the club.  Motivation can be award of certificate, attending out of school club events, gifts, free internet browsing, etc

Evaluate and document:  Strive to ensure all club activities are well documented for future reference, learning and sharing. Conduct regular evaluation to determine club progress. Develop club reports and share with other.

Networking and sharing:  Create avenues where students can share club activities and well as gathering information. Use social media to create blog, fan page,facebook, skype, chats etc.  Teach students on the use of search engine for information gathering. Club Patrons should be open to consultation and sharing, share with other patrons. Create your contacts database of like-minded club partners and stakeholders.  

Capacity building: Knowledge is power!, use the ICT club platform to disseminate ICT knowledge and skills. Integrating student training enterprise (virtual companies) in the ICT clubs is an excellent idea that allows student to practice their skills. Organize various training session to empower members. Training such as communication skills, presentation skills, computer usage skills, interview and CV writing skills, video editing skills, web design, blog, creating of business documents, software installation, basic computer troubleshooting skills, etc, are vital for ICT club members.  You can organize for guest speaker or facilitator. Student like guest speakers!

Active participation: Keep the club active, have scheduled club meeting days with defined agendas. Assign roles and duties to club members. Students quit clubs that are boring and have no meaningful activities that are interactive and stimulating. Club patron, organize and attend club day’s session to fuel the student participation. You can even organize school based   club event such as a trade fair or club presentation that will involve the whole school to attend. Use such forum to educate non-club members you activities and encourage them to join.

Harry Mwailengo  

 The team from iHub Outreach, a program of the oldest startup hub in Africa, came from Nairobi to Taita Taveta and on Saturday organized a two days pilot training (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) on 5 Secondary schools under Sote ICT project.

The training was on (1) website designing based on basic coding and (2) design thinking i.e. how to turn ideas into real commercially viable opportunities. It was wow moments for the students from the 5 secondary schools i.e. Marungu, Murray, Buguta, Kajire and PJ Mwangola to benefit from high level professional mentorship.

I came to Kenya on 7 October to volunteer on our project of Slovak-Kenyan Cooperation for Modern Schools until mid-December. I replaced Ivana Ulicna, who spent almost 6 months in Kenya this year, did a great job helping training companies and got employed at Pontis Foundation in September, where we exchanged our positions. I was in Kenya many times before, but this trip will be much longer. Let me share a few memories and ideas from the last month.

 The ICT Clubs meeting in Chala

 On the weekend of 11-12 October selected ICT Club members from ten schools held a workshop at Chala Secondary where they exchanged best practices of their training companies. In a way, I came right to witness what was I think the highlight of the last month, as I watched students present the progress of their training companies in terms of marketing and financial documents, products and trading between the schools.

 For two days students and teachers took turns to give presentations on various subjects: among others, we had a simulation of job interview with a feedback for the participants; learnt how to do a skype video conference; produce brochures and invoices; and use the internet tools of Practice Enterprise Network. On Saturday evening we went down and up the steep hillside of Lake Chala and saw the sunset and took many photos by the water. Originally, with our colleague Gift, we wanted to present the students at the workshop a Lego Mindstorms robot that I brought as the second kit from Slovakia.  The first Lego robotic construction set we donated to Kajire Secondary, because their two training companies had the best promotional videos. Now we wanted to motivate other students to join the ICT Club next year, as we want to focus more also on technical skills development. For the lack of time we decided to make a separate Saturday workshop between Kajire Girls and Mwambiti Boys and learn how to construct the robot at Kajire on 18 October.

 Mentoring training companies and presenting Lego Mindstorms

 Gift Mtambo is the soteICT administrator that started to work with us in May. And now in October we toured around nine out of ten schools that participate in the soteICT project and mentored the soteICT Clubs on proper business documentation and also showed two types of Lego robots. Gift assembled the first robot, Track3r, in his free time and we presented it at Kajire ICT Club on Wednesday 15 October, before the Saturday workshop. During the weekend meeting between two schools we used a second Lego kit, and created the Track3r again and also a Banner Print3r. We came again to Kajire on Monday to finish the Banner Print3r, as it was harder and slower to assemble than Track3r. But we managed to get the construction right, just the paper and marker type we had wasn’t ideal. We were able to demonstrate the Print3r but it wasn’t writing the right letters. Later we found a YouTube video that showed us where we had a problem. It was great to observe girl and boy students from the two schools to cooperate and learn how to construct something new and exciting. We didn’t get to the active programming of the robots, only tested various sample programs and used a remote control for the Track3r. This is challenge for the next year, but we are proud that now we kick-started the use of Arduino Starter Kit by Mwambiti before summer and now the use of Lego Minstorms by Kajire.

On Thursday morning three of the ambassadors of change, namely; Zuwena, Irene and Marolyne left Murray Girls High School for Voi. We arrived there by 10:30am meeting four other ambassadors; Emily, Peter, Hezron and Robert.  We were seven in total under the lead of Madam Christine Kilimo from Kajire Girls High School. The Coast Bus arrived at around 12:00 noon and we boarded it for Nairobi .The journey was long and tiresome but we decided to make it lively by chit chat about life in our schools and companies. We had a lunch break at Mtito   Andei and set off again for Nairobi arriving nearly at dusk.

One remarkable difference between Nairobi and Taita is the near gridlock of vehicles. In Taita, you almost have the entire road to yourself which is quite the opposite of Nairobi with all the sea of humanity and cars!.  When we arrived, we were met by our host David Ogiga who became our wonderful host for the next 48 hours and managing the program.

By 7:15 the following day, we had already had breakfast, taken photographs and we were leaving for the United Nations .At the United Nations, there was tight security that I have never felt before.  Peterson from the Embassy of Slovakia became our companion for the UN section. We visited several places at the UN which we enjoyed. We saw art pieces the names of their donors and their meanings. It was also fun because we got some time to rest, take photographs, videos and watch television. We were also joined by a lady Chinese tour guide who was great and very social. The tour was very educative and the environment was conducive, green and clean. Later on, we left for United States International University (USIU). Almost same standards as UN, USIU is also very clean and organized and Peterson informed us that anyone who steps on grass is fine 2000/= on spot. This made us realize the reason for the tidiness of this place. The students were friendly and since it was Freida Brown Day. One thing in common was that we all wished to go to USIU or join Universities in Slovakia. First, my thought of joining USIU was because of the friendly students, the university has a good environment which is free from noise pollution providing it with a good environment for studies and besides they offer great courses like law and business studies. Alternatively, I wished to study in Slovak because I had heard a lot of good stories from both Ivana and David. Some were like the good facilities, very good education especially for those studying medicine, the whole country is clean and the people are friendly to each other and to foreigners.

From here we drove to the Slovak Embassy, an opportunity to meet the Ambassador Dr. Michal Mlynar and this was meant to be our highlight. We were ushered in by the secretary and we all sat anxiously waiting to see the ambassador. Soon, the ambassador came in. Mr. David introduced us to the ambassador as the young ambassadors of change. I felt so proud of that title and immediately thought of my mum who has been my pillar and supporter. The real ambassador, Mr. Michal Mlynar spoke to us on varied life issues, mentoring us on careers and how we can positively change the society. We also asked him personal and general questions and we were impressed at the ease he shared with us and the genuine interest in our work. We felt so proud. The ambassador awarded us with certificates and officially conferred to us the titles ‘Ambassadors of Change’. To cap it all, we each got gift bags and took several pictures in the serene embassy. The highlight was shaking the ambassador’s hand of course!

By Herman Mwalukuku (Chairman of the bye bye meeting)

Dear William Oloishorua,

It is with great shock that I received news of your departure. Yes, I have always believed that we are not permanently placed in one school but at one given moment, we could be leaving for some other school which may need our services. However, I had never imagined that you, William, could be leaving at this particular moment when we highly need you. I may not let tears out of my eyes because men don’t cry, but I want you to know, that my heart will silently weep and cry.

It is hard to say goodbye to a colleague who has been more of a friend than a co-worker. I will miss you and I am sad that the joyride of working with you has to come to an end. I wish to console myself that we will remain in contact through social media though I know this will not give me much of the services I have always gotten from you. Kindly remain in touch with us as you continuously keep posting on Soteict project.

For the first time, you can be assured that your leaving leaves a wide gap in the performance of our companies. The performance of our Training firms will definitely be affected when an exceptional coordinator like you leaves. With few rays of light in eternity, David Ogiga needs to move swiftly and do a quick reorganization and keenly monitor the change-over period to avoid embarrassing gaps. For, in your absence the hearts of all your colleagues will uncontrollably grieve.

 The performance of the school you are going to is bound to improve in the next quarter. This is because dynamic and efficient employees like you – they couldn’t have hired any better-remain energetic, focused and determined to achieve your high placed goals. With you in Narok I want to believe we can extend the hand of Soteict and start similar activities there. This will keep us glued to each other. Be a good ambassador for Soteict family in Narok.

 Good work

I wish to appreciate the good works of your hands that can never go unnoticed. You have had good communication skills which kept us moving forward. You kept updating us of any new messages and activities of our concern. We appreciate how you were able to mobilize all of us into activities.

As Ezra Abuga puts it, “you have been very instrumental in Kajire Girls and that your leaving leaves an unpleasant vacuum in leadership.” We are, however, glad that you had already started grooming Mr. Mjomba and Mr. Ezra to take leadership of the training firms in Kajire.

As I retire, allow me to define William as an elegant, humble, refined, educated, humorous, responsible, loving and passionate man.

 “WE SHALL MISS YOU WILLIAM OLOISHORUA”

Last week  three of Slovaks from our soteICT team returned from Kenya with lots of new experiences and notes from ten secondary schools we visited. Teacher Daniela Skladanova and co-owner of the eTechnology company Juraj Kopani joined together with Jakub Simek from Pontis Foundation our team in Kenya for ten days from 25 June to 8 July and trained teachers and students at five new schools in our programme from Taita Taveta about project-based teaching, new educational tools and student training company methodology.  Here are some observations and notes:

The five new schools in the soteICT program are catching up

Every school has a unique challenges and position. Some like Buguta and Mwangola Secondary are relatively young schools and didn’t have any ICT equipment before our cooperation. Others had some computers and even projectors but the IT integration into teaching of other subjects besides Computer Studies and extra-curricular activities wasn't that developed. But thanks to intensive mentoring by our colleague Ivka Ulicna all soteICT Clubs and student training companies now have regular activities and clear structure and joined the five older schools in our three competitions in: promotional videos for training companies, CV writing and the Ambassadors of Change Essays. The training on project-based teaching by Daniela was meant to inspire the teachers of other subjects to use ICT in their projects and increase cooperation with other colleagues and even other schools, be it in Taita Taveta County or Slovakia. Juraj trained teachers on a proper use of various combinations of ICT tools in the classroom – eBeam interactive whiteboard, AVerVision document camera and the Data Harvest measuring equipment. We encouraged teachers to give special assignments to soteICT Clubs at their schools and use their assistance in preparing presentations and other teaching materials.

Regular teacher meetings are necessary to increase cooperation and best practice transfer

After the first and smaller meeting this March we held on 6 June the second brainstorming and networking session with teachers from 10 schools in our soteICT program and spend a whole afternoon on discussions and sharing of ideas how to improve the various levels of our cooperation. For example Marungu is really good in ICT integration and all teachers have a schedule for computer room. They have also made a remarkable progress in their student training companies. Other schools like Kajire and Mwambiti excel in videos and presentations of their companies. A new school in the project - PJ Mwangola -  scored third with their videos promoting investment and tourism in Taita Taveta. Mwaghogho and Buguta reached out to neighboring primary schools and for example Buguta students from the ICT Club helped to train teachers at Buguta Primary which also benefited from the SlovakAid micro-grant and has a computer lab. Chala Secondary invested in satellite internet to make it faster than the mobile internet solution that we pay for because of sustainability and higher internet costs.

Plans for the third term and the next school year in Kenya

This school years student companies were active in marketing and competition but we want them to also get better at administrative processes and make the business simulation deeper. We agreed to proceed with some simple model business cases and negotiations between student companies from Kenya and/or Slovakia, where one company orders a product (e.g. advertising campaign) from another student company, that send an invoice that will be paid through an internet banking simulation and another student company Mshindi KCB.

During our trainings and school visits could see a real progress in almost all schools in terms of clear structure of their student companies and their products. Apart from measuring equipment for four new schools and Marungu we donated also various materials for student companies and  also four more Adruino starter kits and one Merkur construction set to support also the technical and science aspects of student clubs and reward active schools.The first Arduino and Raspberry Pi was given to Mwambiti and Lego Mindstrom set to Kajire to reward their student companies' winning videos in the first spring competition. We have encouraged the two student ICT clubs to meet together on the weekends and help each other in their construction projects.

A blog ICT Works created by Wayan Vota is a popular resource for the development cooperation community working with ICT integration projects. Yesterday the blog published some of our insights from our cooperation with 10 secondary schools in Taita Taveta, Kenya.  http://www.ictworks.org/2014/06/18/top-10-lessons-from-ict4e-projects-in-kenya/

Here is the summary of our observations:

Instead of one expensive piece of equipment, donate at least two cheaper pieces of important equipment per school – cameras, projectors, etc.

Motivate your school leaders to give honest feedback – if a camera breaks they should report it immediately without worry instead of waiting for several months.

It is not enough to work with ICT teachers: their position is not stable and influence is limited. Head masters are travelling a lot. The most vital person to win for the project is the deputy headmaster. Once you have a good and motivated deputy, your risk is quite possibly cut in half.

Blackouts and a slow Internet in rural areas is a big problem. Sometimes you need to give incentives to teachers to travel to bigger towns so they can upload student videos and finish other tasks.

Use volunteers from the recipient country that can spend weeks at each school and learn about its day-to-day life.

Give students exposure to computers outside of “normal” lessons – ICT clubs, student companies, and scientific competitions would all be beneficial.

Make teachers comfortable – not everyone needs to gain the same skills. For some it is enough to know how to move through the PowerPoint presentation that was created by a colleague.

Develop and improve your MEL – we use Google Docs surveys for students and teachers but had two methodological problems in the past. Now we look for more robust ways to evaluate and improve our projects using volunteers and outside experts.

We need to be more aggressive in pursuing gender balance and equal participation of students and teachers.