Though the Centre for Disease Control reports that Ebola has slowed down in Liberia, the epidemic has claimed over 3000 lives and schools have been closed since July.
Tariq Fancy, a former banker and now founder & CEO Rumie Tablets wants to to something about kids education. Fancy and his team developed a low-cost tablet called Rumie which aim to take education digital and help the kids in their learning from the safety of their homes without the fear of contracting Ebola.
Rumie is set to launch an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to ensure each kid in Liberia gets a tablet.
In a Facebook post the firm says, “Rumie is using innovative technology to bring education to Liberian children, whose schools are closed indefinitely due to Ebola. And we need your help. Join us for a Happy Hour on November 27 as we launch our Indiegogo Campaign to sponsor tablets preloaded with educational content for our friends in Liberia. Let’s together support innovative ways to combat pressing social problems.
100% of your support goes to sponsoring Rumie tablets (zero goes to overhead), meaning that every $50 we raise sends a Rumie Tablet to Liberia. Each tablet contains a full library of educational content for the mere cost of a book (see how we do this at rumie.org). In addition, a generous private donor has offered to pay shipping costs – no matter how many tablets we end up sending.”
Launched last year as a non-profit, Rummie wanted to build a new model of low-cost digital access to education for the world’s poorest then months later an organization approached them to use Rumie Tablets at a facility to rehabilitate former child soldiers, this led to another.
“While Liberia wasn’t yet on our radar, they had learned of our device and insisted that it was perfect for their program,” writes Fancy. “We shipped devices to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, towards the end of July, just as the Ebola outbreak was becoming a clear threat and just before the borders were closed. Unfortunately, the program for former child soldiers was suspended due to the Ebola outbreak.”
So with schools shut down, the team initiated a program to allow kids to use Rumie Tablets as a replacement for school and for entertainment during that time of uncertainty. Then it sparked themm to go for the initiative fully rather just trying it with a number of students.
The crowdfunding campaign, the low-cost tablets aim to bring education to the kids. The Rumie Tablets are power-efficient, cost just $50 each and can store thousands of high quality educational books, videos, and games for offline use.