Inspiration
The Government of Kenya officially launched the Coding and Computer Programming Curriculum to be used in Public Schools. The government also unveiled a new government-driven digital skills training aimed at equipping 20 million Kenyans with relevant digital skills to enable citizens to operate effectively under the digital economy. With all these being launched across the country, we asked ourselves one question, "where will students get free resources which best suit their needs?" And that's where the idea "Elimisha Africa" was born.
In Africa, most of the organizations offering coding Bootcamps to primary or secondary school students do not put emphasis on their knowledge, skills, and interests. It is also important to note that most of these organizations offer the same training at a fee, which most African families cannot afford.
As a team, we sat down and thought of building a non-profit making organization that will offer free online coding resources to students. We will also be having physical Bootcamps across the country, provided we get adequate funding. We will be committed to fulfilling the digital knowledge gap in Kenyan children by modeling our programs on silicon valley schools’ standards.
What it does
Elimisha Africa is Kenya’s leading STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) non-profit making organization providing tailored coding programs for primary and secondary schools. The platform will allow both tutors and students to sign up for a free account, then access free learning resources directly from the website. Students learn how to develop simple programs, apps & games using visual and/or text-based programming languages. We are centering our content on projects to enable the learners to gain more practical skills which they can implement in real life problems and promote innovation.
How we built it
The application is built with Python(Django), HTML, CSS, JavaScript(JQuery) and PostgreSQL. Azure App Service – hosts the application.
Challenges we ran into
Working as a team came with its challenges. We had to sync with different schedules to find the right time to have the stand-ups. Also, the person that was supposed to work on the frontend just stopped communicating, and we knew we had someone to do our frontend, only to realize that nothing had been worked on. We had to come together and see how we could complete the project with the limited skills we had.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a product prototype that is working despite the challenges we faced.
What we learned
We have learned how to set up an organization on GitHub and create a repository for the organization then assign each team member roles. We have also learned how to collaborate on Github. Not forgetting Azure Web Apps Services
What's next for Elimisha Africa
Apart from just having text-based learning, in form of articles, we plan to have video-based learning on our platform. We also want to have a feature that enables students to book a one-on-one session with a tutor. We also need a feature that allows donors/sponsors to fund us directly from the platform. We will implement that using mobile payment methods like PayPal, M-Pesa, Payoneer, Skrill, etc. One last thing, we want to expand our reach so that we go beyond Kenya. Every child in Africa deserves a better education.
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