ICT4Kids: a student’s trip to South Africa
We went to Mamelodi, a township near Pretoria. Here we taught basic computer skills to underprivileged people, who were mostly in their early twenties.
Since a great deal of our students had never used a computer before, we had to start with the absolute basics. In this day and age, many positions require at least basic computing skills such as word processing. By the fifth and final day, we wanted our students to at the very least be able to use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word.
We hoped that we could transfer our knowledge of basic computer usage and word processing to our students. We also hope that they can transfer this knowledge to other people within their community.
- ICT4Kids is a project by students of the Radboud University Nijmegen with the purpose to provide children in South Africa education in computer skills. Aia Software supports this wonderful initiative.
Since this knowledge is a requirement for so many positions, we feel that those people have a better chance at getting a job with the help of these new skills.
At the end of the course, our students were presented with a diploma which will show possible future employers that they successfully completed the course and have experience working with computers.
Whilst we were there, we saw that many computers were gathering dust because something trivial was wrong with them. We took it upon ourselves to fix these computers. After five days, we managed to fix numerous computers, not only in the school but also in another nearby church and school.
By Bart Laurens Leusink, flexpool student at Aia Software.