Project Zambia 2016
Another year has passed at Northern Star Academy. Happy, grateful students have completed the six modules that make up the school program. The year starts with 'English and communication' and 'Sustainable Agriculture'.
From January to April, students at Eventures Northern Star Academy completed the first two modules of the year: 'English and Communication' and 'Sustainable Agriculture'. Then followed the two modules 'Health and Nutrition' and 'Community Development', which are two central modules for the students' further progress. At the end of the year, the modules 'Project Management' and 'Science' fill the school timetable, where students get some more professional tools for life after Northern Star Academy. Read more about the individual modules below.
A look back at Project Zambia 2016
In northern Zambia is Project Zambia – a development project built and run by the Danish association Eventure. Since 2013, Novicell has supported the project, and over the years the commitment has grown. In autumn 2015, I visited the project for the first time and saw with my own eyes what the support goes to and what results Novicell helps to create. The trip also formed the basis for another visit, and in the spring a group of colleagues from the house therefore traveled to Zambia to build an IT room at the project's post-secondary school. And last month it was my turn to pack my backpack and travel to Zambia once again.
"Tablet Night" is a hit
Although only a year had passed since the last visit, the development in Zambia was to that extent noticeable. At the project's secondary school, Northern Star Academy, they now had a fully functional IT room with laptops, server connection and brand new tablets for the school's students. The facilities are used in daily teaching, but the weekly "tablet night" in particular is a huge hit among the students. Here they are allowed to geek out with the new IT equipment and explore a world that, until Novicell's visit in the spring, was completely foreign to them all.
Kindergarten for the little ones
During 2016, Project Zambia was also expanded with two measures for the younger target group. Eventure Care Kindergarten opened in September and now welcomes 40 happy children aged 3-6 from the neighboring village of Mbete every single day. The kindergarten is run, like the rest of the project, by volunteers from Denmark, but as something new, it takes place here in close cooperation with locals. Eventure has employed two of their former pupils from the post-secondary school as principals in charge of the kindergarten. The two were on the very first school team at Northern Star Academy and have since completed high school. Together they do a great job, and it was great to experience the synergy between the two strong locals and the Danish volunteers.
Play and learning for everyone
The last major expansion in 2016 is the floating boarding school Living Library, and fortunately we also managed to experience it up close. In short, a large plank boat is packed once a week with books, toys, balls and much more and sails 20 minutes up the coast to the village of Chezi. Here, both Eventure's volunteers and the students from the after-school contribute to an afternoon with full pressure. All the children from Chezi come to join in, and there is both reading, playing, dancing and singing for a few hours, before the boat is packed up again and sails back. Fortunately, it all repeats itself the following week, and it was quite clear to see that everyone involved got a lot of joy out of the new initiative.
This spring we are again sending a team of Novicell colleagues to Zambia. This time the task is to ensure that there is an internet connection at the school, so that the students can get the most out of their tablets.
At Novicell, we now as of the year of 2016 have 130 employees who are all passionate about our areas of expertise, and good ideas often come out of that. One of them is the idea of establishing a brand new IT room at the school Northern Star Academy in northern Zambia. The school is part of Project Zambia, which the Danish association Eventure is behind, and which i.a. Novicell supports with a fixed monthly contribution.
To make a long story short..
The idea of an IT room originates from Per Kirchner's visit in the autumn, where he, in close collaboration with the Danish managers on site, developed the first ideas about bringing more IT into play at the school. Briefly, the project involves procuring and delivering tablets, network equipment and supplementary power supply to Zambia, so that they can use teaching material from apps and the internet to optimize and differentiate teaching for the school's students. Therefore, in addition to hardware, we must also procure software in the form of apps and teaching material, as well as ensure the maintenance of IT in a climate that is miles away from Danish conditions.
The team has been set
We are: Thomas Eriksen (Novicell), Peter Halkjær (Novicell), Martin Sørensen (Novicell), Lasse Kjær (DuGlemmerDetAldrig.dk), Morten Tanggaard (Novicell) and Karina Kristensen (Novicell), and the plan is to go to Zambia and hand over equipment and material at the beginning of April this year.
You can also help
In order for the idea to become a reality, we are dependent on contributions for the purchase of material for the project. Novicell has already signed up to support our project, and we hope that you will also join us. 100% of all contributions will go directly to purchases for the benefit of the school and the young people who attend Northern Star Academy. Contributions of all sizes are welcome, and all sponsors will be mentioned in the subsequent mention.
A development center for young people
Only 1/3 of all Zambian schoolchildren receive more than 7 years of schooling. And with 14.5 million inhabitants of Zambia, it is therefore a large group of children who do not progress beyond the 7th grade. That is why Eventure with Northern Star Academy steps in and offers and pays for schooling to some of the Zambian students who would otherwise have been 'lost' in the education system.
Northern Star Academy each year gives 30 selected students the chance to start anew. Through a free after-school year in an educational and developing environment, students are equipped to complete high school, something which Eventure and the sponsors of the association pays for.
The students ultimately achieve what corresponds to a Danish upper secondary education, and so far the experiences have been good.
The aim of the school is to create personal development and strengthen the young people so that they can raise their level of education and benefit others by bringing their knowledge back to their local areas. Many of the young people at Northern Star Academy want to become teachers, nurses or the like in the communities they grew up in.
In this way, the project not only helps the 30 students at the school, but also the entire community, which gains knowledge and skills that they have not had access to until now: It can, for example, make a big difference for a local community to learn why it is a good idea to plant a new tree when cutting down the old one. Or what water quality means, how to put together a healthy and nutritious diet, and how to set a budget for a start-up business. All things that the students at Northern Star Academy learn - and learn from themselves.
IT can help
One of the challenges at Northern Star Academy is to lift the young people from their often very different backgrounds and educational levels to be ready for high school. And this is where IT becomes relevant. With tablets, apps and other teaching programs, the school's teachers are given the opportunity to differentiate teaching to a greater degree than before, and this will undoubtedly result in a faster increasing learning curve for the individual student.
And while IT is not necessarily the first thought that comes to mind when talking about Zambia or Africa in general, there is no reason to think that our focus on IT is out of place in relation to the needs in Zambia. IT is certainly not unknown in the country and many of the students at Northern Star Academy are already on Facebook on their mobile phones because they give them free internet. The school also has a few individual PCs, which the young people try out during their stay at the school, and here they benefit greatly from using, for example, Excel in their mathematics or economics lessons.
The volunteers who teach at the school say that the young people are quick to take IT to heart. However, the possibilities are limited in terms of the amount of equipment and the large expense of buying new and transporting it to the school. Delivery of a package from Denmark to the school can take up to 6 months.
Therefore, our idea is to purchase, transport and set up a complete IT room at the school in Zambia, including instructions on maintenance and teaching material ready for use.
The project is already supported by:
Roscoe & Stars ApS
Flemming Hansson Andersen, Hinnerup
Kirsten-K stress management
In April 2016, six colleagues from Novicell and DuGlemmerDetAldrig traveled to Lake Tanganyika in northern Zambia to build an IT room at the Danish-run school Northern Star Academy. Here, Lasse Kjær, partner in DuGlemmerDetAldrig, tells about the experiences in Zambia.
On 23rd of November 2015, an email showed up in my inbox from Per Kirchner. The email was brief, but the opportunity was too great to say no to:
Novicell has for a long time supported Project Zambia created by the danish association Eventure.
On Per's own trip down there in October, the idea of a digital classroom was born, and that's what the email read: Who was up for taking a trip all the way to Zambia and Eventure Village to deliver and set up all the technical stuff for a new digital classroom at Northern Star Academy after school?
I didn't hesitate for a second, and neither did five others from Novicell. Four months later, on Friday 1st of April to be exact, we arrived at Eventure Village after a 36 hour journey which included 4 planes, 1 bus, 2 cars and 1 boat.
“This… is soo wild!” was the clear thought as we could spot Eventure Village and Northern Star Academy from the boat on the way in. I had not yet met the people here or seen the area, but I knew that we were about to experience something completely unforgettable and that in the coming week we had the opportunity to help a project that makes a huge difference in the local community.
What is Project Zambia?
Project Zambia is charity in the right way. It is a huge effort and dedication from one danish association, Eventure; to give the local young people the skills and confidence to create development themselves in one of the poorest parts of the world. During a conversation with a former student at the school, Kennedy, told me the following:
"When I went to Northern Star Academy we walked to the nearest village to educate about growing certain plants, that would make sure the children got all the nutrients they need. After a while a lot of the children were no longer suffering from malnutrition”
For me, it hits the heart of the project!
A full blast of experiences
Have we been able to help? Yes, I think so. But hopefully we have only just begun. The week has passed with a perfect combination of work due to setting up the digital classroom and a large pile of unforgettable experiences. In the experience account, these weigh heavily: A hike into the jungle to find the waterfall, as well as teaching the students in sports and a morning session with acting, dancing and singing.
What exactly have we helped with?
There are 25 students at the school. What they all have in common is that they come from the surrounding villages and very poor conditions. The students, at least some of them, have a phone (not a smartphone). One has a laptop where music can be played. They do not have access to the Internet. In the spirit of the project, the digital classroom must support the goal of the students' continued development with the aim that they can help develop the local community in the right direction.
Novicell is synonymous with nerdiness. Therefore, we quickly end up in details about equipment, technical setup and the like. It's not important here. The important thing is that, after a week in Zambia, we have set up a digital classroom packed with educational materials and applications that can challenge and develop students' creativity, help them document and evaluate their development in subsistence farming, sports and much more - everything together, something that the school already places great emphasis on in teaching. At the same time, it has been ensured that all documents, images, videos and the like are automatically synchronized on all other devices, despite the fact that the devices do not have access to the Internet. Via the set up servers, all units have access to approximately 160,000 educational videos on everything from technology to agriculture.
The digital classroom is now set up and we have introduced the students to the devices and options. How have they reacted? Here, the following pictures says far more than I could describe:
Project Zambia has affected us all. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the trip here is one of the greatest experiences in our lives, and that, if requested, we will gladly help the project even further in the future. In addition, several of us come home happy - with a High School sponsorship awarded to some of the students.
Thanks for the support
Vi var ikke lykkedes med dette projekt uden støtte fra en række danske virksomheder. På vegne af os selv og alle eleverne i Zambia sender vi derfor et stort tak til:
Roscoe & Stars ApS
Flemming Hansson Andersen, Hinnerup
Kirsten-K stress management
Here's how YOU can help
If you want to hear more about how you can support Eventure and Project Zambia, contact our CEO Per Kirchner!