iMlango's eLearning platform nominated for Digital Inclusion Award

We are delighted to share with you that iMlango has been nominated for the best e-learning platform award at the Digital Inclusion Awards 2017.

This nomination recognises iMlango as one of the leading four e-learning platforms in Kenya, and acknowledges that our use of innovative technology to deliver digital education services across the country has helped to improve learning outcomes for children marginalised through poverty.

Vote now!

We kindly ask you to show your support by voting for iMlango. You can do this by simply clicking the link below and selecting the 'General' option, and then 'iMlango' under best e-learning platform category:

http://www.diawards.com/vote/

Alternatively, if you live in Kenya, you can vote by texting 37B to 40199.

Voting closes on Friday 1st December 2017, and the winner will be announced on Monday 11th December 2017.

Thank you for your anticipated support!

The iMlango Team

iMlango Junior Debaters Contest – competition one prize-giving ceremony

We were delighted to hold the iMlango Junior Debaters Contest - Competition one prize-giving ceremony at Kibaokiche primary school in Kilifi county this month. The top three placed groups were in attendance at the ceremony, with first place coming from Kibaokiche, and second and third place from Kasidi primary school. Both schools are located in Kilifi. 

Champions group receive their prizes.

The winners of competition one, Champions, received three computers, Oxford geometric sets, pens, pencils, rubbers, exercise books, story books, shoes, and school bags. A raucous crowd of their school-friends cheered them on as they were awarded their prizes. 

When accepting her prize, one of the group members, Zainabu said:

"I am very grateful for the gifts that iMlango have given to us, they will not only help us as we do our Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination, but will also help us as we move onto form one.’’ Zainabu added that the contest had helped improve her grammar, and English performance.

And according to the rest of the group, the secret to their success was cooperation, as this taught them that teamwork is an important life skill.

During the prize-giving, Kibaokiche's headteacher Mr Geresa Motto added: 

"The awarding of the Champions group and the school has raised the interest of other pupils to participate in the contest, as they have seen what their schoolmates have been awarded. We are also grateful for the added computers and the teachers are ready to give full support to the project."

In the ongoing iMlango Junior Debaters Contest - Competition two, four groups from Kibaokiche have made it through round 1, with Champions achieving the highest score of the round with a fantastic 82%.

They are supremely confident after their success in competition one that they will now go onto win competition two!

Headteacher (left) Mr Geresa Motto, and Community Support Officer of Mariakani (right), Mr Chimbungu Mwarumba address pupils and congratulate the winning group.

From Kasidi school, the Zion group took the runners-up spot and the Lions group came third. The groups were awarded a combination of the aforementioned prizes, but did not include computers. 

During the award ceremony, Mr Balozi Juma, an ICT teacher at Kasidi, talked about iMlango's impact, advising that the learning platform had changed girls’ perception of education, improved their self-esteem and confidence, and had helped them learn how to handle life's challenges.

The Zion and Lions groups from Kasidi primary school.

It wasn’t just the top three groups who advised that they enjoyed and learnt through participating in the contest. Kombe, a student from the Blue group in standard 6 at Vishakani primary school, said that the contest had helped him improve writing compositions, as he learned how to construct full sentences, whereas it had helped David from the same group to learn how to read sentences fluently without stammering.

Schools such as Mwandodo and Vishakani who participated in the contest but did not make it into the top three places, said that the award ceremony had motivated and challenged teachers to improve their pupils' performance. Madam Happy Katana, ICT teacher at Mwandodo, said that in the coming rounds they will 'encourage and guide their pupils well' so that they will become winners. 

Congratulations to the top three groups on a fantastic performance in competition one! We wish you the best of luck in competition two...

Until next time,

The iMlango Team

iMlango sponsors the upcoming 7th Annual mEducation Alliance Symposium in Washington D.C.

For the past three years, iMlango's programme partners have been invited to share the great work that each organisation has been carrying out in Kenya, so we are delighted to be able to show our collective support by sponsoring the 7th Annual mEducation Alliance Symposium, which takes place on 5 and 6 October in Washington D.C.

The Alliance, which was founded in 2010, is an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, academic researchers, and implementing organizations.

The collective agenda of the Alliance is to explore cutting-edge intersections between mobile technologies for education, particularly in low-resource and developing country context, to reduce duplicative efforts, to promote collective knowledge-sharing, and to identify and support efforts to scale promising ICT4E interventions.

For this year's event, the mEducation Alliance Steering Committee have taken a novel approach, asking presenters to look backwards from the year 2020 and share specific information about the pathways they, or other partners, followed for gathering the evidence to scale and spread their successful information and communications technology (ICT) initiatives by this year. 

This theme demonstrates the power of the Symposium as a venue for discussing pathways to spreading and scaling innovations, the importance of gathering evidence of impact and for highlighting the essential role of policy makers in adopting ICT4E initiatives.

Looking forward to another great Symposium next week - see you all there...

The iMlango Team