Soon, in our training centers in Bungoma county and Eldoret in Western Kenya a new training program will take place. In addition to training sessions on health and basic business skills, on farming and hygiene this training will close a huge gap. It‘s a skill that often is making a big difference between those who know and those who don’t. Again, it’s often the poor, who have no access to it: the digital world.

In our digital era people living close to the poverty line are the „big losers“ again

There are many reasons: it might be the network coverage, the lack of devices, the missing financial means to pay for Internet access …

Even if this can be tackled, there is still the other big gap: the digital knowledge and how to use these devices. Just imagine you don’t know how to „open“ the Internet, how to create an own email address, how to use digital services …

Here you find a video about the feedback after such a training that we conducted in India!

Poverty is aggravated by the digital gap

Many people I have met in India and Kenya in the villages or slums have heard about the Internet, but they have never experienced it and they have no clue which big world of knowledge and inspiration, of culture and business, of networking and collaboration they are missing.

That’s why we are starting now a huge digital skills program in our project area in Western Kenya. This training will run in our three centers/ hubs in Webuye, Eldoret and in our farmer cooperatives in Bungoma county and include teachers, farmers, women and men, parents and people with albinism. From rural and slum areas.

A few days back our volunteering colleagues from Borhringer ingelheim META have run a test training with local discussions about the concrete needs. Doing this program WITh the people, not FOR them is key!

In the first phase, more than 250 devices will be handed out to our communities. Wifi connections in our MMH centers and school are available. Based on this infrastructure we have developed a huge number of training modules and courses which will be given by our employees – virtually. The usage of the devices themselves – from PC and laptops to tablets and smartphones – and the handling of standard programs such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel as well as email handling, usage of the Internet, Internet risks and data protection are part of the curriculum.

Stay tuned! We will tell more soon…