GoGirls ICT Initiative

Gender Narratives Through the Lens #GNTL

Gender Narratives Through the Lens #GNTL

Gender Narratives Through the Lens #GNTL

#GNTL a pilot project, is a virtual mentorship hub in the areas of audio content production, film making and entrepreneurial skills.

The target beneficiaries are women and girls from secondary schools, graduates and school dropouts to use these skills to improve their livelihood through digital storytelling.

The overall goal of this project is to build the capacity of South Sudanese women and girls in the digital creative industry.

#ClassroomOnPhone

#ClassroomOnPhone

#ClassroomOnPhone series (GoGirls learning podcast)

#ClassroomOnPhone is a pre-recorded learning program where learners are taught science subjects with the aim of enhancing the love and practice of science in primary and secondary school students.

When South Sudan went into a lock down in March 2020 due to the pandemic, we had a conservation with parents and teachers who were beneficiaries of our Time To Shine ICT #TTOSICT project on how they were and their children coping up with the closure of schools. And that’s when the GoGirls team embarked on a research on Virtual learning methods for Offline communities as part of its Access to Skills and Knowledge network #ASKnet Project.

During this time, we held workshops to introduce South Sudanese primary and secondary school Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers to virtual learning, including their definition, examples, content development for virtual learning, challenges of virtual learning among others. Teachers explored virtual learning platforms both online and offline and mockup projects to create content for virtual learning.

The team further interacted with 25 students who were beneficiaries of #TTOSICT project in their various communities to know the challenges faced by students during the pandemic so that to build a knowledge base to help us tailor our training activities to the current situation. The interaction with them revealed that girls didn’t have time to read due to several home chores, noisy environment during the day so they can’t concentrate, lack of electricity and for those whom their schools provided with reading materials found Science subjects to be the most boring and hard subjects to study alone.

These findings were shared with the teachers who were providing these students with handouts and holiday packages to study at home. The teachers too found out that most of the assignments these students answered were not done by them hence proving not effective. This led us to explore cheap affordable technologies by our communities such using Micro SD cards and feature (button) phones since they are very affordable and accessible by everyone.

Together with GoGirls teams, the teachers from four primary and secondary schools developed STEM learning material with an integration of Arts (STEAM) in the form of podcasts loaded on micro SDs for a selected group of learners.

The students were introduced to virtual learning platforms and how to access these platforms including access to this content in form of podcasts hence, #ClassroomOnPhone.

Here is the link to the podcasts

https://anchor.fm/classroomonphone/episodes/ClassroomOnPhone-Series-GoGirls-learning-Podcast-ergreh

Gosanitize

Gosanitize

Download our Open-source #GoSanitize Resource

#GoSanitize

The Gosanitize project  is a social enterprise brand poised to reach great heights in the production of hand sanitizers of high quality and affordable prices by the community within South Sudan.

Download Report

Gosanitize Project

Gosanitize project  is a social enterprise brand poised to reach great heights in the production of hand sanitizers of high quality and affordable prices by the community within South Sudan.

These hand sanitizers are made from locally available resources such as lemon epicarps, Aloe Vera and locally brewed alcohol in South Sudan. 

The main goal of Gosanitize is to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive sustainable industrialization and foster innovation in South Sudan to achieve Sustainable Development Goal Nine (SDG 9).

This project brings together chemistry experts from secondary schools and local female brewers to exchange knowledge and ideas on the production of high quality and affordable hand sanitizers. 

 

This project has also featured on UNDP‘s site. More in the link below.

https://www.ss.undp.org/content/south_sudan/en/home/presscenter/articles/2020/UNDP_AccLab_launches_experiment_to_locally_produce_sanitizers.html

https://undpsouthsudan.exposure.co/gosanitize-a-made-in-south-sudan-initiative

#ASKnet – Access to Skills and Knowledge Network

#ASKnet – Access to Skills and Knowledge Network

Access to Skills and Knowledge network #ASKnet Program

The #ASKnet program provides access to skills and knowledge to empower South Sudanese communities to address challenges within their communities through Open Source innovations to promote and encourage Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics with an integration of Arts (STEAM) Education.

This program seeks to address the root problems of gender inequality in South Sudan that doesn’t encourage girls and women to learn STEM using Art through a peer to peer approach focused on the sharing of skills and knowledge leveraging on Open source and STEAM methodologies through research.

In partnership with _r0g/agency for open culture and Critical transformation, this program started in 2019 and through this funding, the capacity of the GoGirls team has been enhanced and we have been working on a pilot called “Open Science Framework for Classroom experimentation” to promote STEM education in schools together with primary and secondary school teachers within Juba. 

The Open Science Framework for Classroom experimentation was developed during the Teachers in Science Hackathon hosted by GoGirls ICT Initiative and some of the questions raised were;

  • How can feedback channels between curriculum developers, policymakers, teachers and learners be improved? 
  • How do we break the stereotypes of girls not taking sciences?

Three key discussion points took centre stage such as;

  • What Innovative #OpenScience approaches can be used to conduct Science experiments in Primary and Secondary Schools?
  • How can Science Educators, Schools and Institutes of Higher learning collaborate to bridge the gap between theory and experiments related to science?
  • How can science teachers improvise with locally available materials /resources to overcome the challenge of limited or no available materials for conducting experiments?

And the outcome of this framework are the following innovations by the GoGirls team,university students and Science Educators.

  1. Gosanitize
  2. Classroom On Phone 
  3. Access to Skills and Knowledge related to Internet of Things (#ASKrIoT)
  4. Repair Cafes

GoGirls ICT Sponsorship Initiative

GoGirls ICT Sponsorship Initiative

GoGirls ICT Sponsorship Initiative

Through our Time to Shine ICT #TTOSICT project, GoGirls ICT Initiative came up with a sponsorship scheme for the best performing mentees since 2017. This was deliberated upon after discovering that many school dropouts were as a result of lack of tuition to keep students in school as a result of many factors including poverty. And also many girls raised the issue of high fees for science courses and through this scheme, we believe we can be able to help make their dreams come true.

Selection Criteria

In order to qualify for this scheme:

  • A student should have participated in the #TTOSICT mentorship program running in their school.
  • A student should remain in her/his particular school unless joining another level.
  • The student should have completed their mini-projects and presented it to a panel of judges to be evaluated during the #TTOSICT competitions.
  • The student’s school should have emerged among the winners with the best ideas implemented or their group is the best in their school with the best ideas during the #TTOSICT competitions.
  • Some special exceptions are, student must be vulnerable and can not afford paying school fees. For this criteria the student does not necessarily emerge winner during the #TTOSICT competition but rather should be a participant
  • For Participants joining higher institutions of learning, he/she must be joining a public institution with South Sudan.

Monitoring Framework

  • We follow up with the schools on how the students were performing.
  • Schools provided a copy of termly performance report of the student(s) for those in primary and secondary while for higher institutions, results will be provided twice per year for each semester.
  • During the course of the term, one visit to each of the schools and a conservation with their teacher.
  • One on one conservations with each participant every end of the term and psychosocial support.
  • And in cases of poor performance by the student, in that very school with the help of the focal teacher, we have also set up a counselling session for such students to find out what could be the problem.
Family Visit Program

Family Visit Program

GoGirls Family Visits

In this program, we reach out to families of the students we mentor, educate the parents about what we are teaching their child during our mentorship program and have conservations surrounding their child’s behavior, performance and challenges they face which gives us first hand information from both the parent and child.

Objective

Our aim is diversity in peace and at grass root level: a family is the smallest unit of a nation or nations and the world. No peace at home means kids can’t perform well at school, Parents can’t perform at work, Wives can’t be good wives in a home, husbands beat their wives and the entire family end up in chaos.

In most cases, children raised in such homes end up joining gangs, alcoholism due to lack of guidance and examples to learn from at home in other words (lack parent role models) and the result is living recklessly lives which most of us have witnessed in our communities.

Thus, many homes are in chaos, communities are affected as many of these kids end up being thieves, girls’ dropout of schools resulting into early marriage and the result is continuous to generations, only a few come out of such situations.

Many communities in chaos affects various communities of a nation. Then a whole nation not at peace, people fighting themselves because they want to release anger, we end up with Communities at war! Nations at war! The world at war…

The list of possibilities is endless.

 

Relevant Link

https://undpsouthsudan.exposure.co/propelling-the-gogirls-together