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School friends, Molly, Lucy, Maeve and Jemima watched a TED talk by Professor Sugata Mitra at school one day. The TED talk opened their eyes to the possibilities of using computers and the internet to educate children in poor countries. The girls, aged 15 at the time, felt inspired. They felt as though they could do something to change the lives of so many children. They sat down together with cups of tea and lots of snacks, making a plan.
They designed a movement called the EDCLUB, which stands for ‘Educating Disadvantaged Children to Learn Using Broadband.’ They would start with a small pilot projectWhen a project is first done on a small scale to check it works. in the Huruma Slum in Nairobi, Kenya, and planned to eventually build the movement to something bigger. They chose the Huruma Slum because one of the girls, Molly, had lived in Kenya a few years before and had already worked with the community.
First, they had to raise enough money to buy the computers and internet package. They spent the next few months doing all sorts of things to raise money: car washing, dog walking, sponsored running – you name it, if someone was offering to donate money in exchange for a service, the girls would carry out the service! Soon they had enough money to set up the computers in the chapel in the slum. So they travelled to Kenya and set those up.
Back home in the UK, they organised regular sessions where they would use Skype to communicate with children living in the slum. They taught them how to use the internet as an educational tool. The pilot project was a great success and more funds were raised to build a computer lab for the project in the slum, meaning more computers and more children’s lives changed. At this stage, so many children in Kenya were coming to use the computers. Molly, Lucy, Maeve and Jemima couldn’t keep up! They needed more mentors.
The girls gave assemblies at many schools near them and used social media to spread the word and get mentors involved. Eight years later, the project has expanded to Malawi and India, changing the lives of more and more children. Providing children with basic tools such as computers and internet access improves their education. Then, they can become change-makers themselves, coming up with and designing new, world changing things! Molly, Lucy, Maeve and Jemima heard of a way they could help hundreds of children and they set out to do so. They said, ‘EDCLUB is determined to change this because we can.’
