Hack to Teach 2017, a hackathon hosted by Ideation Social Innovation Lab, a San Francisco based nonprofit, is set to see African tech talents design and build an ed-tech mobile platform geared towards improving the quality of basic education within the informal educational sector in Kenya.
Set to be held from Jan 25 to 27 at Eastland Hotel (Ring Road, Kilimani, Nairobi), the competition see that teaching requires as much expertise as any other professional field – if not more. However, five million underprivileged Kenyan children are taught by untrained and unqualified informal school teachers. The first poverty trap for underprivileged children stems from the lack of access to adequate basic education.
Since July 2016, Ideation Lab’s Kenya Informal Sector Teacher Training Program trained teachers from 120 schools and provided education loans to lower the tuition by 41%. In addition, its business management system helped multiple teachers colleges achieve financial sustainability for the first time.
The program was widely featured by national and international media, including Huffington Post, CCTV Africa and NTV, attracting over 4 million unique views in total. The closing ceremony was attended by all major government education stakeholders.
In order to scale its education loan program and school management system in Kenya, Ideation Lab plans to distribute its solution as an Android mobile platform to more colleges and teachers. During the three-day hackathon, African software engineers and developers will produce prototypes for a college accounting system, collection system for loan repayments, and post-training evaluation system for teachers.
Judges and mentors include product designer from Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firm, Head of Social Innovation at Safaricom, Africa Digital Media Institute, CTO of BRCK Education, IBM Researcher, Dean at CEMASTEA, and Directors from KICD and Standard Chartered Bank.
A total of 60,000 KSh will be awarded to four teams: Most Innovative Award, Best Product Award, Global Impact Award and Excellence Engineering Award. Each day, there will be networking and lunch & learn sessions for the participants covering topics from design thinking to ed-tech innovation.
Space is limited, and registration is on a first come, first served basis at ideation-hacktoteach.devpost.com. Join us today – together we can empower all teachers to have access to professional training and all children to receive the high-quality basic education they deserve!