Empowering Songambele Communities with Digital literacy

What is digital literacy?

Digital literacy is about the level of experience someone has with computers. It refers to having skills and the knowledge to use computers competently in many applications for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In today’s world, almost everything is going digital hence the need for communities to acquire the basic skills in information and communication technologies. Since the establishment of the Songambele Maarifa centre in November 2012, communities are constantly getting new knowledge that can be used to improve their livelihoods.  Among the capacity building initiatives at the Mmaarifa centre are scheduled ICT trainings.

The centre is equipped with five computers dedicated for training communities on various computer packages. These include Introduction to Computers, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Point, Internet and e-mail.

Who can be trained?

The centre is open to all community members regardless of whether one is a farmer, business person, hawker, student, teacher, nurse or even an unemployed youth etc. The first ICT training started in December 2012 and involves 24 trainees; 4 teachers, 3 business people, 5 government employees, 7 youth (boys and girls), 2 church leaders and 4 school leavers. This group of trainees will finish their training by end of March when another group will start. Already over 86 community members have registered and a criteria will be used to select the next batch of 24 trainees. ‘At the end of the training, each participant will be tested and awarded a certificate of participation’, remarked Mr. Noah Lusaka of ALIN from Nairobi during a brief discussion with some of the trainees during his recent visit. The ICT trainings will enable communities explore available opportunities especially among the youths on e-learning, e-commerce, access appropriate information for development and much more.

Reaping the many Benefits of being ICT compliant

According to Ms Herieth Sila, the Maarifa centre Field Officer, ‘The ICT modules taught have been very useful to the community as they have started applying them in different areas in their lives. For instance the workers like extension officers can now type their different documents ranging from reports and other documents while the Village Executive Officer (VEO) can type letters confidently. Teachers use excel to tabulate and arrange pupils results at school; a task that used to take more time’.

"Some of the youth trainees like Johari Farijala have already been booked for employment by the Stationery shop owners at Songambele market!” Remarked Ms Herieth. Ms Zawadi Michael who volunteers at the centre as a Community Knowledge Facilitator uses her Excel skills to catalogue Maarifa centre information resources.

Many of the youth have indicated they would like to pursue further studies online as they seek Internet related work. Jared Mkanwa, the VEO says: “the Maarifa centre project was timely because it will reduce instances of idleness among the young people and thus a reduction in petty crimes. The project will in the long run reduce rural-urban migration. It is already helping parents to cut down costs for training their children on ICT skills being offered only in Dodoma at a cost of approximately Tsh. 650,000/= (USD 420).

 Watch this space for more testimonies!