We were visited by the team from the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) last month - which is part of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) - for the formal review of the programme. Accompanied by the field team, they visited a number of iMlango schools located in the Kajaido area, to see the progress and impact the programme’s had on the schools, teachers, and of course, students. It was really great to have the GEC team on the ground in Kenya, and we welcomed their recommendations, which were all very constructive and positively received from the entire team.
The GEC team were able to view first-hand the completed school implementations, attendance monitoring in action and the students accessing the iMlango learning platform in class. Chris Wallace, the GEC programme lead, stated that the “iMlango project has successfully managed to put in place the three Cs of Connectivity, Content and Capacity.” Chris has also written a very informative blog post on her time in Kenya: iMlango Connecting Students in Rural Kenya, which gives further insight into the programme. Many thanks to Chris, her team and the GEC - their insight and guidance will allow us to improve the programme’s impact on the many girls in our schools.
So, as the dust settles on their visit, we now have an opportunity to reflect and act to improve the programme, which is now impacting over 130,000 schoolchildren in Kenya.
But, as always, there’s still a lot of work to do. Ensuring that the schools remain engaged is no easy task. We have a number of regional coordinators that are in constant communication with the schools to stay on top of any issues that may arise.
Moving into July, the field team held a number of insightful meetings with communities across the Kajaido region. The meetings were arranged to discuss a potential enhancement to the programme that involves providing financial incentives, and measuring their impact on the students’ educational outcomes.
Community engagement is extremely important to us – without their help, it would be a near impossible task to make a significant, sustainable change in the schools.
Until next time,
The iMlango team