Camara wins the David Manley Entrepeneurial award

It was my birthday yesterday and it was a good day (for once!).

Barak Obama was elected and Camara won the David Manley  Entrepeneur award. With all the news on the American election this great bit of news might well get missed! See the article here.

Reflections on returning to Ireland

Its been about three weeks since I last posted an article in the blog. A lot has happened in that time. I have been back in Ireland about 2 weeks and much of that time here has been spent with my 12 year old son Osian who as usual brings me down to Earth, opens my eyes to what is important and always brings it home to me the simple message that in the age of virtual connections and digital lives how crucially important genuine human interactivity is for us to thrive and grow.

Firstly, I miss all the amazing volunteers in the workshop in Mombasa. They are an incredible bunch of people who touched me deeply and have given me the energy and commitment to keep going with this project. They have also made me realise that the Camara project will be successful if we can harness thier marvellous energies and abilities in the right way.

Secondly, the trip this summer has opened my eyes to my own prejudices about peoples abilities in the developing world. There is a tendency to doubt peoples capability simply because one feels more educated or more experienced as a result of living in the 'developed' world. Nothing is further from the truth. On a number of occasions this summer I was left staggered and amazed at peoples ability and potential.

And the technological tools we are putting into peoples hands are helping realise that potential. That is the key point that needs to be stressed.

Thirdly, and on a more sobering note, it is clear however, that it is non trivial to set up 'bases' in Africa and manage them remotely. Given that it is a key step in Camaras evolution, we will have to evolve a model of what works and what does not work as we go along. Initial reflections are:

(a) When picking a partner roles need to be defined and clarified from day one.
(b) At least one full-time person from Camara per hub is required.
(c) The board of directors needs a neutral person from neither of the main partners.
(d) Camara needs to initially hold the chair to get the technical side of the hub setup.
(e) The hub needs to be a separate legal entity with its own executive governance structure.

There is no doubt that we can choose partners that we can trust and work with as Camara grows. However, given the pioneering nature of what we are doing its going to be a bumpy ride!

Good Publicity

Camara got very good publicity this week. Check out the following link:


http://www.rte.ie/news/features/globalclassroom/index.html

This link includes the 6 O'Clock news broadcast last Monday, some extended interviews with various people involved in the project and the radio interview I did with Miles Dungan that morning.

There is a great story about what was involved in actually securing a landline for the interview which I will relate a little later in another note (for reasons that will become obvious when I tell the story!).

The Camara volunteers head home tomorrow - I will stay on for another week or so. Its always a sad occasion when they go home - for the volunteers themselves, but also especially for the local people. A month is actually a short time out of here but because of the context of the project its enough time for people to become good friends and for people to miss one another when everyone goes their separate ways.

That said, there will be some celebrating done tonight! Its been a great achievement for all concerned...

Graduation

Yesterday was graduation day. Its now 3 weeks into the program and all the Digital Hub trainees on the Basic, Intermediate, Advanced technical courses and the the Training of Trainers courses attended a simple but significant ceremony to mark the completion of their efforts.

Each person who has completed a technical course gets a Camara skill builder certificate with various stamps saying which modules have been successfully finished. Some of the advanced modules include Linux Operating System essentials, Networking, Web Design and Hardware Maintenance.


Around 800 people attended the event yesterday. It was an incredibly positive and encouraging occasion with everyone buzzing!
.

All 800 people were fed with Samosas and soft drinks. I honestly have no idea how this was organised or funded! The team below is the often unrecognised anchor team that worked in the background to make everything happen. It was a staggering logistical achievement. I see it as the 'Samosa's and Sodas' equivalent of the 'Loaves and Fishes' story ;-)



Its easy to forget how important it is to give recognition to people who have limited opportunity to have their abundant talents and potential recognised.


Dan, one of the Camara volunteers, summed it up brilliantly when he said he had never taught a class so eager to learn and so quick to learn complex tasks and challenges in such a short space of time. He was privileged to have been their trainer...



When people received their certificates their sense of pride was palpable.

Giving people back their dignity is one of the most rewarding aspects of this whole project. It goes beyond technical skills and knowledge, education strategies, development issues and even rational reasoning. Its the outcome of a simple positive human instinct flourishing in action.


Camara is working to have these certificates formally recognised so as to increase their value in the community. Even with out that formal regnition people are already getting employment based on the certificate. What people learn on the Skill builder course is extremely practical and by extension extremely and immediately useful to people in the IT industry here. Only this month one of the hub trainers was employed to deliver a month long Open Source ICT course to a school that the hub has just delivered computers to.

He is teaching 8 teachers who each pay the equivalent of about 10 euros to do the course. His transport is paid for by the school and the course runs for 2 hours every day after classes. In Irish terms the trainer is getting well over an average months salary for his work.

These kind of opportunities are beginning to manifest themselves more and more. Its exactly the kind of outcomes and outputs that we had hoped the hub would produce. The only thing that has caught us off guard is the speed at which things are happening!

Creating employment for people 6 months after the hub had opened was way beyond our wildest expectations....;-)

Three friends

When you take a step back from a project and remove the 'must, should and have to' blinkers for awhile you notice and appreciate little things that have happened in the wake of the relentless pursuit of project deliverables and objectives....

The hub attracts a range of people with all kinds of different perspectives - men and women, young and more senior, different religions and so on. Its such a tragedy that we struggle to embrace diversity as a human asset rather than constantly seeing it as a threat.

As a general rule when human beings work against one another because of their differences we tend to bring out the primal and more often than not, the awful side of human nature.

When we work together 'because' of our differences (and celebrate diversity) we demonstrate the truly wonderful aspects of being human.




The three girls in these pictures met at the hub and have become really close friends. They come from different cultural and societal perspectives but have come to be totally comfortable and respectful of one another's point of view. They are one single but wonderful example of the above. They travelled with us to Lamu and are now an essential part of the local team as they are absolutely brilliant with computers and keen to learn more.

We had a football match involving the whole team just before we left Lamu. It turns out that these girls are also great at football (despite having limited practice)...trust me, we have bruises to prove it....;)

Lamu

We are just back from Lamu - a remote island off the North East coast of Kenya near the Somalia border. There are 12 schools on the island and almost every school has a Camara computer lab.

Something pretty special happened on this trip to Lamu. For the first time an overseas team and a local team worked together delivering training and maintenance services to a remote community. The local team have been in training over the last few weeks and the Lamu trip was a golden opportunity for them to try out their new skills.

Ultimately this is the way forward. Local trainers empowering schools and their teachers to pass on the knowledge and expertise to the children.

Here is a small pictorial record of the trip:

Lamu Island














Local transport



Heading to the school


One of the 12 schools on the island


The door is open (I really am a poet right?)



Local training



The local trainers fixing computers



Training trainers


Rory training



Local artist prepares the certificates (in beautiful calligraphy)



Local Cemetary

Cats and Donks (sorry)


The team celebrates with donkey and cat off the menu


Bus breaks down on way home - we all get out to go to toilet (under armed guard;)



The girls had to go a bit further and almost missed the bus...


Following the trip Rory contemplates tree structures and branching?

Stumbling across genius...

There is a remarkable story in the history of Mathematics where at the beginning of the last century, a young Indian man by the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan, born into extreme poverty and with very little formal education was 'discovered' to be one of the most significant mathematicians of his generation. Through sheer persistence (and a lot of luck) Ramanjan, who educated himself in mathemathics using an out of date text book, wrote to eminent Mathematicians of the day to convince them of his capability including proofs and postulates of his own in his letters. Eventually the great British Mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy took notice and arranged for Ramanujan to go to to Cambridge college in England and so began an extraordinary collaboration between the two men. Unfortunately the collaboration was short lived. Ramanjuan was of very poor health and died at the age of 33. There is a good link here. This story has always intrigued me. How many geniuses, born into poverty, never get recognised and die anonymous without ever realising their potential? I also have a suspicion that sometimes its the very extreme circumstances and conditions that a person is born into that helps create the genius in the first place. The human mind seems to excel when challenged... I just wish we did not have to reply on poverty to create the challenges in the first place! So the question is will we discover a genius along the way with the Camara project? The answer is that we already have. In the last two weeks, I have met two people (a man and a woman not related) who are truly exceptional. They learn extremely quickly - frighteningly so. They are hungry for knowledge and responsibility. They are passionate and energetic and committed in everything they do. They complete complex tasks effortlessly. I cannot write their names down because since we got internet connectivity into the hub they read this blog! The question is what to do now. What would you do in this instance?

Following on from the robbery.....

We had a meeting with all the senior people during the week concerning the person who had been stealing RAM etc from the hub and the ensuing events afterwards.

I know I may be wrong in this and stand to be corrected in the approach but I honestly felt it was appropriate to 'challenge' the culturally accepted view that thieves should be severely punished when caught.

I appreciate that I am coming at this from my own 'privileged' background and that is always baggage laden. However to be honest extreme punishment for thievery is not just a developing world phenomena - go into any disadvantaged area in Dublin and ask what happens to thieves caught stealing from their own!

Anyway, we had an open conversation with everyone and it evolved into a learning exercise for everyone.

We all agreed that we need a process and a set of procedures to handle theft and that beating the person senseless was not appropriate.

However, people really did feel that a thief should not be allowed back into hub once caught.

We had a discussion on restorative justice (thanks for that suggestion Liam!) and people seemed genuinely open to engaging with the idea. However, we did struggle to find an appropriate task or set of tasks that a thief could do to repay their debt.

People however are now thinking about the issues from a human rights perspective and I think that is a small step forward.

The part of the discussion that was most challenging was when the issue of Islamic law and justice came up. I always struggle when Religious rules mix with justice issues. To be fair though, Islamic law does claim to ensure justice is served appropriately following a lot of consultation with everyone involved in a crime.

I was tempted to tell the story of Jesus asking the stone throwers about to stone a woman to death 'who amongst you can cast the first stone....'

but thought better of it....;)

(....for the time being anyway...)

Passing the baton....

The second week of training has just finished. The team will be heading up to Lamu this week to do some training there - its one of the most remote regions in Kenya with Camara computer labs and inevitably given its location there are extra challenges there particularly around power supply and computer maintenance. However, we realised at an early stage that if you are going to equip schools in a remote area you need to equip a cluster so they can support one another. To date this has worked really successfully, even in Lamu.

Lamu island is a world heritage area and is a stunning place to visit.

One of the big differences this year is that local trainees will be coming with us to help with the training. Ultimately it is local people who will be doing the outreach training and maintenance needs on an ongoing basis. Everyone has been amazed at the level of knowledge and expertise the local trainees have got to.

For most of them, the trip to Lamu will be like their first holiday despite the fact that we will be working very hard! Many of the trainees have never travelled further then the suburbs of Mombasa. It really humbles you to see the excitement and anticipation of people getting ready for the trip. Back home we really take free time and our leisure time for granted.

Another big development is that one of schools in Mombasa receiving computers this week has agreed to pay the local trainees to train them in the use of their computers. The fee is nominal but enough to suggest that this could be done on an ongoing basis with other schools. And this means the local trainees can start generating revenue from the skills they have learned in the hub. Most importantly this can be an incentive for people to learn in the first place and so the entire cycle from education to enterprise is sustained.

As the Digital Hub develops here you can see three 'divisions' emerging. The refurbishment section (generating revenue from the sale and installation of the computers), the training section charging affordable rates for courses and the maintenance section generating revenue from maintenance contracts with schools.

Obviously given that the entity is a not for profit any charges are going to be commiserate with whatever people on the fringes can afford. The basic ethos of making technology and training affordable to everyone will not be compromised.

Crime and Punishment

For some reason on this visit to Kenya I keep getting reminded about how seriously people view stealing here. I was only here two days when I witnessed, first hand, 'mob justice' delivered to a man who had broken into the hotel I was staying in and who had taken about 500 schillings (5 euros). The man was almost killed.

I have spoken to many people here about the incident (including friends and people I deeply trust) and without exception people here saw nothing wrong with how the man was punished for what he did. If they had been in the vicinity when the man had been caught they would have joined in with everyone else.

This was shockingly brought home to me yesterday when somebody was caught stealing some equipment from the hub.

The thief was chased, caught, dragged into the workshop and then beaten.

Thankfully, the manager of the hub intervened and everybody calmed down.

I did not witness this and only found about it a few hours later when the senior people on the hub were deciding what to do next. They asked me to speak with the thief.

The tragedy was that I knew the young man who had stolen the graphics card and some RAM. I had spoken to him many times before and was always impressed with his enthusiasm for the technology and the speed with which he was learning. He is a young father and it appears he had a little business on the side repairing computers using parts that he stole from the hub.

In a twisted irony, we are of course trying to encourage entrepeneurial activity via the trainees but obviously using legal means!

I spoke with the young man at length and tried to encourage him to tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It seems that a full confession from him would avoid him having to go to the police station where a full confession would be 'extracted'.

Whatever about getting a full confession, he did confess to stealing and that meant he was not obligated to go to the police station. Lucky guy.

I then spoke to the senior people in the hub and listened to their side of the story. Apparently the man was under suspicion for some time and they were just waiting for an opportunity to catch him red handed. They wanted to ban him from ever coming back to the hub.

The consequences of this decision for the young man are disastrous. He is truly somebody who could benefit from what the hub offers....

What do you do in a situation like this? There is no doubt that the man is guilty of stealing but he was doing so in order that he could support himself and his family whilst he was training in the hub. That said, if everyone chose this means to support themselves the hub would have no resources!

In addition, is it right to challenge the cultural idea that severe punishment for even the most minor of stealing offences is justified?

I have taken the view, for good or for ill, that this perspective needs to be challenged. We have arranged a meeting of all the senior management and volunteers to discuss the issue this evening.

For me the punishment should never be worse than the crime but human nature often demands this. Also a punishment should include a mechanism for redemption. There should be a way for a person to redeem themselves of their wrong doing.

My suggestion here is to insist on the 'thief' returning everything he has stolen before he can be considered for re-entry into the hub. Along with this there should be a suspension period.

Is this being too idealistic?

Some Income generating Ideas

Its early days yet for the Digital Hub here in Mombasa but the hope is that it can ultimately be a self sustaining entity generating not for profit income to sustain its operations and outgoings whilst providing a valuable educational service to the community.

This may seem like pipe dream idealism! And if you had asked me a year ago how possible was it to make the Digital Hubs self sustainable within a few years I would have said its not possible.

Over the last few weeks I am really beginning to change my mind. Here are a couple of ideas that have occurred to me following interactions with various trainees over the last few days:


(a) The hub could charge for internet access (even at a rate of a schilling (a cent) a minute) this would more than pay for the monthly internet connection fee.

(b) The hub could charge for printing. A simple per page charging system would cover the costs of a good colour laser printer and on going cartridge costs within a few months.

(c) The hub could rent out its van (if it had one) as a low cost bus service to and from the training facility.

(d) With a good internet connection the hub could charge a small fee for VOIP calls abroad.

The above projects just require a bit if investment. I wonder would people be more willing to put money into 'development investment' like this? For example

500euros would buy a really good colour laser printer here.
1000euros would pay for a good internet connection for a year.
5000euros would buy a 13 seater van that would last for a couple of years.


(e) The hub could be an Open Source centre of excellence offering installation and maintenance service to Open Source Cyber Cafes

(f) The hub could charge a nominal fee for training and maintenance services that it offers. Schools and small businesses are quite willing (and capable) of paying for ongoing maintenance of their computer systems. They also require on going training. As long as the fees do not alienate people with minimal resources this would be fine.

Its easy to forget how little things cost out here if you are a local. Without exception all the trainees I spoke felt they could live quite comfortably(as in having the basics like shelter, food and transport) out here on 500 schillings a day (that' s about 5 euros) or a monthly allowance of about 150euros.

A combination of a few of the projects above could provide this basic allowance to key trainers whilst they are based in the hub.

If it is invested correctly money can really go a long way here. The projects above will not make the hub sustainable on their own but they suggest that there are simple ways of generating income for the facility that collectively can go a long way to that end goal.

Kevin Myers Article

I was sent the link to the Kevin Myers article in the Irish Independent (that 'fine' Irish Tabloid that has done so much for our country). It really makes my blood boil.

I would love to know if the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions people genuinely hold in Ireland. If they are we truly have lost the plot.

The problems in Africa are extremely complex and there is no doubt they can seem insurmountable but that aside, the really disturbing aspect of the article to me is the assumption that unless you are giving something of value to the western world then you are worthless.

In other words, anything that contributes to the sustenance of our way of life is good - anything that challenges it is bad.

That is pretty much the same attitude of a crocodile. As long as it is fed (including even eating its own children) all is OK. If its life is threatened then it kills the threat.

The other incredibly naive assumption is that just because we gave 'some' money to Ethiopia 20 years ago that all its problems would be solved and Ethiopia would never be in need again.

Imagine giving a severely abused child pocket money when she was 6, telling her to spend it wisely on her future, going off on a world trip for the next 20 years and then coming back and being surprised that the child has grown up quite dysfunctional and in even more dire need of help.

For me development projects should never be about just giving - development intervention should be about partnership, education and commitment for the long-term. There are no simple, magic solutions - every intervention takes time, resources, expertise and serious commitment to see it through.

Its easy to write diatribe like the Myers article. Its frustratingly hard to do something constructive about the challenges Africa faces. Articles like the above just make those challenges harder.

Its no wonder that toilet paper costs more than our newspapers.

A weeks training complete

It has been a busy week training and all seems to be going well albeit with occasional hitches in scheduling (its important to make allowances for the distance some of the trainees travel in order to do the training - this means the classes sometime start late much to the annoyance of anyone with Germanic blood in them;)).

There are a number of different training strands going on. This year Camara is evaluating and testing the delivery of a FETAC level 3 basic ICT course. Ultimately, the hub needs to be in a position to hand out fully accredited certificates if the training services are to be more widely recognised. 20 men and 20 women with no ICT background are being trained each week (on the week long course).

In addition, there is a training of trainers course which includes 8 men and 9 women all hand picked and identified as having great trainer potential.













The exams for an intermediate ICT certificate for a selection of trainees that have undergone the Hub intermediate ICT course (run by the locals here) are also being run. On July 26th it is hoped that over 200 people will graduate with a Camara endorsed certificate at a special ceremony to be held in the massive Aga Khan Hall in the centre of town (massive because we expect about a 1000 people plus to attend the event!).

Finally, but most importantly, a number of high level intense ICT course are being run with the most advanced trainees in the hub. These include a networking course, a Web design Course, An understanding Linux course and an advanced computer maintenance course.

I have paid close attention to the last few courses and once again am amazed at how quickly people are absorbing extremely technical and complex ideas that they are being bombarded with. In the networking course for example the trainees are already building their own mini network (with online access) in a corner of the hub. In the web design course people are now programming web pages in HTML. In the Linux course people are doing command line scripting to fix problems with Xservers etc and in the maintenance course people are swapping drives, replacing BIOS batteries and experimenting with jumper lead settings for master slave CD, hard disk configurations.













Its genuinely fantastic to see the local people totally engaged and excited about what they are learning. There is no doubt that in a very short time, they will be teaching us a trick or two about how to operate computers out here.

I know I have said it before but it really does seem that you can make a genuine difference in a short space of time because you are leaving the technology in the hands of the locals when you leave. If the intense training is done right you can catalyse peoples expertise and interest in a way that allows them continue learning when you leave. And even if they only have limited online access they can even be helped from afar!

This final element is a great example of how technology can sustain and nurture the important human connections that are essential to keep everyone 'growing'.

The Container Arrives

There is something really special about being out here when a Camara container arrives. It really brings it home to you the importance of all the effort that goes into collecting, testing, refurbishing, cleaning and packing of the computers back in Ireland. The huge effort by the management team and the volunteers there to put all the logistics and systems in place for this to happen is often taken for granted. When the container arrives here after the enormous 6-8 week sea journey (passing down through the Suez canal and the Red Sea) and you see and feel the utter delight of people here unloading the computers, you wish that every single person that has ever helped Camara could be present to realise the value of their contribution.

On this occasion it was a 40 foot container with well over 400 computers tightly packed into it. The photographs are just thumbnails of full resolution pics but I hope they capture some of the spirit of the occasion.

Skomara Foundation now a legal entity

After a year of challenging bureaucracy, we have finally managed to create the Skomara Foundation as a legal entity in Kenya. Essentially this means that it is now easier to govern, fund raise for and operate the organisation on the ground in Kenya.












It has been no mean feat to do this. In between applying for registration for Skomara, Kenya went through the awful almost lawless election period where they country was effectively in a state of emergency for about 4 months.

At the best of times bureaucracy takes time here with officials constantly hinting that processes could be 'speeded' up with a little 'help'. Thankfully, we never had to resort to this and now we have a legal foundation that can officially be funded (for the time being equally by Camara and local funding) and made much more visible within the country.












To celebrate the achievement we ate a goat and thankfully I was not asked to witness or participate in its 'preparation'. Apparently in Islam an animal must not suffer when it is killed. I was honestly more concerned about my feelings and not the poor goats;)

I was also allowed use a knife and fork ;)

Local Expertise

We have recognised from an early stage that the best way forward for Camara is to establish Digital Hubs on the ground in Africa where refurbishment of computers, training using ICT materials and maintenance of the technology is done by local people with minimal support from Camara. Minimal support does not mean abandonment however it does mean handing over a lot of control. There is a challenging balance to be reached here.






















One thing I have learned though is that it is easy to underestimate the local peoples ability. Perhaps the formal education that we have had makes us think that there is only one way of learning and because many of the people in the hub here have had very little formal education the assumption is they will struggle.


Nothing could be further from the truth.










The thirst for learning here is incredible and people learn challenging technical skills quickly and most importantly without fear of making mistakes. When I watch the people here fixing computers and using command line scripts to fix operating systems bugs it makes me realise (even more!) how dreadfully limited and inadequate our western educational systems are and what a golden opportunity we are missing with the new technological tools that could address those inadequacies.













We travelled up to Malindi yesterday with some new local trainee trainers from the hub. The basic idea was to visit some of the Camara equipped schools through our partner in Malindi 'The Lindsay Project' and assess what training we could provide there when the Camara volunteers arrive in a few days time.

Its about a 2 hour drive to Malindi and with the need to organise accommodation in advance for the Camara volunteers, lunch etc we only had time to visit 2 schools (we were hoping to visit 4).

The local trainees were tremendous. They went into the labs checked the computers and made sure the labs were in suitable condition for a training course to be run.













As knowledge gets passed and as the Digital Hub grows in strength, local groups of trainers and ICT experts will make regular visits like this to clusters of Camara computer labs (like Malindi) around the country. They will provide training, maintenance support and gather information for research that will be used to improve the project further.

From what I saw yesterday there is no doubt in my mind that this will work.

3 years on

We visited Bamburi Primary school a few days ago. They were having an end of term awards ceremony and we were invited along as 'special' guests to the event.

Bamburi primary School was one of the first schools to receive computers from Camara 3 years ago. They are one of a number of schools that will get an upgrade in the next couple of weeks (we expect refurbished computer to have a shelf life of about 3 years.

3 years ago we were sending out Pentium II computers with 64Mbytes of ram and a very basic edubuntu operating system. The minimum specification for computers these days is a Pentium III computer with 256MBytes of Ram and Ubuntu 6.10 which is considered one of the best educational based operating systems around. Things have come a long way.


We inspected the laboratory and discovered that about 65% of the computers were still going strong. About 25% were un fixable and the rest were giving trouble but still being used. The main problem seems to be the power supplies. Eventually, with mains power going on and off at the regularity it happens out here, the power supplies go.













Our power supply requirements were not as stringent then when we were handing over computers as they are today. UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) have become much more affordable these days and we new make it mandatory that schools invest in UPS infrastructure before we hand over the computers. Bamburi primary will have to do this before they get newer computers.

The other good news is that as the penetration of computers increases people are finding ways of keeping the computers going including ways of repairing damaged power supplies. These skills will ultimately create jobs.












Bamburi primary is on the Bamburi Cement (the biggest cement company in East Africa) campus. The company actually built the school and then handed it over to the government (with disastrous consequences). Hopefully we can convince the company to re-engage with the the school and the Digital Hub here. They have significant resources at their disposal.

The awards ceremony was very enjoyable. The school hosts some of the most deprived children in the area but it never ceases to amaze me how children here can remain positive and cheerful irrespective of their circumstances...