Recently I was looking to donate some money to Sri Lankan charities and was talking to various groups, asking them what their most urgent needs were and where I should allocate money.
One charity was based in the Mullithivu region[1] which is an impoverished rural region in Sri Lanka. The kids there don't neccessarilly have access to the internet or computers at home, so with COVID are left behind as the schools move towards some form of digital teaching.
I thought it was interesting that one of the most effective solutions for this that the charity found was to purchase USB keys loaded with digital curriculums. Apparently while the homes don't have computers, almost all have Smart TVs (to access tamil language programming?) and thus the kids could follow along with school as long as they had their USB keys. The director of the charity also mentioned they were also trying to get the curriculum through phones (he mentioned Viber explicitly, but I'm not sure why it needed to be limited to that), which was another device all families had access to.
We ended up purchasing USB keys for an entire school ($5 each) and money to fund digital content creation. I wonder if there would be a big impact on education in these areas if someone could work out the UX/UI/ergonomics of teaching through mobile phone. Or whether it's just a better idea to fund a infrastructure (school computer labs). The advantage of the former, I suppose, is one could just do it and see if it has an effect.
Thanks for mentioning this! I've also been looking to donate to Sri Lankan charities in the north-east but it has been difficult to understand which charities are still operating and have a legitimate impact.
We donated to six charities and I ended up learning a lot (from a position of significant ignorance) about the charity landscape. I was shocked to find out that $33 per month can fund a full undergrad scholarship for a student.
I was particularly impressed/interested in this non-profit that acts as a coding school and accelerator: http://www.yarlithub.org/
One charity was based in the Mullithivu region[1] which is an impoverished rural region in Sri Lanka. The kids there don't neccessarilly have access to the internet or computers at home, so with COVID are left behind as the schools move towards some form of digital teaching.
I thought it was interesting that one of the most effective solutions for this that the charity found was to purchase USB keys loaded with digital curriculums. Apparently while the homes don't have computers, almost all have Smart TVs (to access tamil language programming?) and thus the kids could follow along with school as long as they had their USB keys. The director of the charity also mentioned they were also trying to get the curriculum through phones (he mentioned Viber explicitly, but I'm not sure why it needed to be limited to that), which was another device all families had access to.
We ended up purchasing USB keys for an entire school ($5 each) and money to fund digital content creation. I wonder if there would be a big impact on education in these areas if someone could work out the UX/UI/ergonomics of teaching through mobile phone. Or whether it's just a better idea to fund a infrastructure (school computer labs). The advantage of the former, I suppose, is one could just do it and see if it has an effect.
[1] http://careforedu.org/