[IDEA]: Giving high school students a future by giving them information

A while back I wrote about the story of an African Girl’s future as a pilot.

This young girl had dreamed about being a pilot for ages! She had seen airplanes hover in the sky above her head, she had cut out pictures of airplanes form magazines and seen movies and documentaries about them as well.

Seems she’s on track to get there. Only one problem though…she didn’t know how!

This girl is just a representation of the situation of thousands of African students who have big dreams but have no clue about how to achieve them.

In a TED TALK, Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh states that as Africans, where were born and the situations we find ourselves born into pretty much determine the course of our lives. If you think about this in the context of the majority of African students, you get to realize that were losing a lot of potential and ingenuity.

Sitting around and worrying about it won’t get it fixed!

My suggestion is we should make use of technology to help give these kids access to information. It doesn’t have to be hardcore stuff. Most of these kids have access to radio’s, television sets, camera’s and mobile phones.

In most African secondary schools, most of these devices (if not all) are illegal. To a large extent its pretty understandable why, but then again in this day and age, this shouldn’t be the case.

My idea is that we should integrate the use of these tools into the education curriculum.

My thinking is if we not only give these kids access to information but allow them to use technology to create information, then we have a shot at helping them achieve what they want to achieve and perhaps, help someone else achieve their goal as well!