Kwakoko Secondary School E-Reader Project

Dear Friends and Family,

As you are aware, I have been serving as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania since July 2013.  I work in the education sector and my primary assignment is teaching biology at a high school,  Kwakoko Secondary School, in northern Tanzania.  One of the biggest challenges we face here is a severe lack of resources for our students.  The vast majority of them are not able to afford textbooks or books  of any kind for that matter.  As a result, our students are not able to achieve well in school and most fail to pass their national exams which means that they are unable to continue their education and have very few options for their future.

I recently helped open a library at our school with one of the English teachers, Madam Msaku, but we have very few books for our students to use.  In an effort to improve the library for our students, we did some research and discovered a great non-profit in San Francisco called the Worldreader organization.  They are on a mission to bring digital books to all children and their families, so that they can improve their lives.  They have been extremely helpful in facilitating the expansion of literacy in the developing world.  Specifically, we are trying to raise enough money to purchase 50 new e-readers each coming with 100 books loaded onto them for the equivalent of 5,000 new books to add to our library.

E-readers offer a unique advantage in improving the performance of students.  After implementation, we will be able to regularly and inexpensively update the e-readers with the latest editions of textbooks and other reading materials (instead of importing outdated books which can be very costly).  There are very few high school level textbooks written in Swahili in print, but the number of digital Swahili books is rapidly increasing.  At the same time, our students will be exposed to new technology which they otherwise would not encounter.  This exposure at a relatively young age will give them a substantial advantage in their future endeavours as the need for technological competence continues to increase.

If you are interested and able to help fund the Kwakoko Secondary School E-Reader Project, my community, students, fellow teachers and I would be extremely grateful. No contribution is too small. By contributing to our project, you will be making a profound and lasting impact on the lives of my students and the future students at Kwakoko Secondary School, as well as their families for generations to come.

To read a great success story on the real impacts that e-readers are currently making on people's lives in the developing world, please click the following link:

E-readers bring hope to Africa's schools

If you didn't click the above link, no worries. I would however like to share the final quote of the article with you:

"The most gratifying thing was to see a child with no shoes but reading an e-reader to other children. That, to me, was probably the best day of my life."

Thanks again and all the best,

Ryan