Learning for Humanity at St. Mary’s

Learning for Humanity (L4H) is a social enterprise which delivers dynamic content and training in a turnkey learning environment called Tusitawi, which is Kiswahili for “Let Us Flourish”. Tusitawi is a total solution, including digital access to over 25,000 textbooks, videos, audio, training materials and other educational resources (including healthcare) to pupils, students and teachers globally. We offer complete technology solutions (hardware and software), made for reliability even in harsh environments, and also offer comprehensive training and support. Schools receive content and feature updates, along with corresponding training, every term. We believe in sustainability and continued impact, so we are here to partner with our customers and learners every step of the way.

Story

St. Mary’s is an elementary school located in Hwange, a town in northwestern Zimbabwe that is just 100km south of Victoria Falls. It consists of 853 pre-primary to grade 7 students and 22 teachers. The school faced various challenges. There was a lack of educational and technological resources, teacher training for competency-based education was limited but mandated by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education, and the textbook to student ratio was only 1:15. The existing lab with 24 computers also required updating to current standards.

In collaboration with regional ministry of education personnel and World Vision Canada and International (WVI), L4H aimed to address these challengesin conjunction with L4H Zambia. L4H, WVI, District Education Head, and the principal of St. Mary’s travelled to St. Therese primary school in Mpika, Zambia to observe L4H’s e-learning system in action at a school facing similar challenges. In August 2017, we commenced the development of the first elearning platform for Zimbabwe, called Tusitawi, which was completed April 2018.

Tusitawi’s content was developed according to Zimbabwe’s national educational standards. L4H updated the school’s existing computer lab to current standards by providing ICT expertise. L4H also outfitted each classroom with a television and every teacher was equipped with a tablet that could project to the classroom television. ICT training was provided to teachers to empower them to raise their confidence in using electronic devices and navigating the new e-learning system. With the help of the tablet, teachers can support students by wirelessly projecting videos and diagrams from a library with a plethora of multimedia resources designed to support every kind of learner.

Impact

The Tusitawi e-learning platform has been received with positive response from the Minister of Education, teachers and students. After implementation of the platform in April 2018, teachers noted that student “Attendance is up”, “Children are highly motivated” and “Girls are reading and digging deeper” into course content. The Minister of Education, the Honorable Professor Paul Mavima stated, “Tusitawi is key to the socioeconomic recovery as part of our Zimbabwe 2030 commitments”. The minister has since expressed interest for installing Tusitawi in all 9500 schools for 5.5 million children in Zimbabwe.

Teachers see Tusitawi as being user friendly and are already seeing an improvement in collaboration and performance amongststudents. In addition, students are coming to school early, accessing the computers over their lunch periods, and staying after school to increase their learning through the new resources. Students have said “We now have full-colour pictures, not just black-and-white photocopies and we can hear real animal sounds, not just the teacher’s imitation of them! There has also been a 13% increase in passing rate for national exams, from 57% to 70%. For 2019, L4H is providing regular updates on new educational resources and is continuing training sessions to support teachers. We are also fundraising for the installation of power and technology for 6 remote classrooms that currently lack access to Tusitawi and are investigating financial sustainability initiatives for implementing community WiFi near the school.

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