Lindsay's Africa Project - IT Resource Centre

And so it has began!
A new stepping stone in the Malindi technology world......Well eh, there's another computer centre anyway!


I've been spending the last month building this here centre. Your kind donations have created this place, so thank YOU!
Myself and Jim (my manager) have been working hard, building, painting, getting in fundi's (a guy that fixes and makes stuff) and doing all the electrical work ourselves.


We received our donation of computers on Monday from PCs for Africa. These were brought by Hilary Hunter herself, the director of PCs for Africa, she is currently visiting the area.

The main aims of the centre, are to provide high quality affordable computer training, and promote and use IT as development tools.
So we are starting an "Introduction to Computers" training program next week, and following from that we'll be teaching MS Word and Publisher, and then other requested packages.
We are working directly with schools, government departments and local community organisations to develop resource material and training courses which will assist these groups directly.
So hopefully all will be successful and received well!


We are currently running open days, inviting all to come and see what we have to offer. The most used item is Encarta Encyclopedia, which everyone loves. Also I'd like to thank Bryan, who was over before christmas, he sent over a huge harddrive full of movies, ebooks, and documentaries, and we have started viewing them in the evenings at the centre.
If you would like to help us like this, from where you are, then please think of IT resources you use or know of, anything that you think might benefit here. I'm working on collecting information and resources from everywhere. UN web sites etc, we don't and wont have the internet for quite a while so one must be more inventive. One way I'm getting around this is by saving websites offline at internet cafes, and transfering them to the computers in the centre. So any good ones you know of, please send on.
I have a friend developing the old "CD-ROM" method, so that'll help us reach other centres and schools with computers already.

All is going good, and I only hit my head off a wall once or twice a day due to Africa slowness.


Supercool!

Lindsay