You may remember that back in March this year, three colleagues of one of our Ride25 Pioneers (Jules Pancholi) from Soho-based, healthcare agency, Nitro Digital, visited Uganda to share their digital knowledge with a group of students aged 16-18years who are being supported under the 1moreChild charity. 1moreChild was set-up by Harry & Hen Ferdinando in 2008 to help enable street children in Jinja, Uganda to go to school. It is a charity close to Ride25’s heart and for whom the network of Ride25 Pioneer riders have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds over the last few years thanks to fund raising and via corporate sponsors.
During their visit to Uganda, Ruta, Duygu and Gilberto from Nitro Digital taught the children practical IT skills and left them with offline learning material for when the Nitro team left Uganda and returned to London. Nitro Digital also funded their broadband connection and donated laptops for the children’s usage.
In the 2 months that have passed since Nitro’s visit a lot has happened! Harry Ferninando, from 1moreChild, reported back recently that the team had made a massive impact on the children (and staff) over in the school in Uganda (and are affectionately referred to as ‘the Computer Team’ by the children). Indeed, Harry states that the team made such an impression that the senior students have now decided to teach the younger ones by running their own computer sessions during the holidays for all junior boys, junior girls and senior girls. Girls in Uganda face many issues, from cultural barriers, to the lack of girl-friendly school environments and so it is great to see this emphasis on including the girls into the IT training so that they will leave school with a great education and vital computer skills to help them into gainful employment in later life. Each senior currently spends half an hour a day to practise typing. This is in order to develop life-long skills and to give them a good foundation for further IT training.
“I know it might seem a big leap for the children from the first touch of a keyboard to a job and a future but I hope that even the most basic skills will give the children a future in the world of tomorrow.
And Harry Ferdinando from 1moreChild perfectly sums up the work and effort that Nitro Digital have put into the children in Uganda so far:
“We know this is the beginning of something really important.
Primary Schools here don’t have any computers (even the one our children go to with 1300 pupils send out letters from a typewriter then photocopied!) and the senior school learn computers on the blackboard. Our children are now gaining vital experience as so many jobs now require at least basic computer skills.”
As Harry says, we too believe this is the beginning of something incredibly significant in the lives of these young people and we look forward to hearing about how they get on in the coming months – and years – with their IT skills. Jules and the Nitro Digital team are also looking forward to continuing to support the children’s learning and will be sending more computers in the coming months. They can’t wait for the day that they establish their first engineering centre in Uganda.
Who knows, the children from Uganda may end up coming to London to work for Nitro Digital…
To find out more about 1moreChild please watch this short (and incredibly inspiring) video about the charity…