Inveneo Presents at Ethiopian ICT Showcase in Collaboration with RTI

1. Posted by Jana Melpolder on April 25, 2014 in the categories: Education, News, Projects

For many years students in Ethiopia were not educated in their own native language, and instead, they were only taught to read or write in one Ethiopian language called Amharic.

Inveneo is collaborating with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and RTI as a partner in USAID’s Ethiopia READ project, a program that was created to enhance reading comprehension in one’s own native language for 15 million children in Ethiopia. To further the project, our Director of Project Management, Kassia Echavarri-Queen, and Project Engineer, Matt Crum, collaborated to create an ICT Showcase in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that focused on discussing which educational ICT technologies would be the most efficient and suitable solutions for the Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Technical Assistance (READ TA) program.

The READ TA Project is a five-year program created to improve the early grade reading skills of young students Grades 1 through 8 across the country. The project now promotes teaching reading comprehension in seven languages that allow students to learn to read and write in their own mother tongue language.

Inveneo gave several presentations at the ICT showcase. More specifically, Matt Crum spoke about local Content Server, LED/Hybrid Projectors, Virus Protection, and gave additional information about a baseline survey which was conducted last year. He explains further, “We want to be able to get some of the best teaching content available into these schools to help the curriculum through interactive multimedia, videos, and access to information. That’s the main purpose that we’re coming in with. With Internet connectivity you can show a video of a great teacher and people can interact with experts in a field.”

Representatives from certain organizations were also given the chance to present ongoing or completed ICT initiatives that would strengthen READ TA’s mission.

Other participants of the showcase included representatives from the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, local ICT initiatives, and READ TA Partners such as RTI, CoreNet, and Whiz Kids Workshop. The showcase was not open to the public but overall still had about 80 attendees.

As a first component in the READ TA project, Inveneo in conjunction with its local ICT partner Corenet did a baseline survey back in 2013. The survey measured ICT capacity in the College of Teacher Education (CTE), School Cluster Centers (SCCs), and satellite schools (which are all primary schools). Throughout the survey Inveneo measured power, current ICT equipment, Internet access, software in use, technical capacity, and current support plans (if available). From the survey Inveneo discovered that there’s diversity in all the CTEs and their individual capacity.

Our exciting work in Ethiopia will continue to grow throughout the next several months. Inveneo plans to build tools to enable monitoring and evaluation for this project in case there are any technical issues.

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*This article “Inveneo Presents at Ethiopian ICT Showcase in Collaboration with RTI” is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of Inveneo and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

Inveneo is Increasing Work-at-Height Safety with Petzl Foundation

1. Posted by Inveneo on June 27, 2012 in the categories: News

In 2011, the Petzl Foundation hosted Andris Bjornson, Inveneo’s Chief Technology Officer, and Jen Overgaag, Senior Project Engineer, and in 2012, Matt Crum, Sam Perales, and Eyleen Chou, Inveneo Project Engineers, for a Tower Access and Rescue train-the-trainer course at the Petzl America headquarters in Utah. This course was designed to provide invaluable hands-on training for Inveneo staff and enabled Inveneo to develop a training curriculum and a safety equipment kit with Petzl’s work-at-height safety experts.

These skills and $10,000 in donated Petzl tools will be used to train and kit our extended Inveneo team and our in-country technology partners, helping them deploy safe practices in configuring broadband Internet networks on communication towers in the developing world. Often, setting up these networks involves large-scale tower climbing to position equipment correctly. Our entrepreneurs, though not new to technology, are often new to climbing or have haven’t formally learned safety skills. These trainings are critical to the safe set-up and delivery of our broadband networks, and we proud to share these invaluable skills with others.

Ronald, an apprentice engineer, during a Haiti training

Based on the Petzl training, Inveneo implemented two trainings in Haiti and trainings in Eldoret and Nairobi, Kenya. In Haiti, where we are implementing the Haiti Rural Broadband Network, communications technicians were anxious to learn safe climbing techniques and were very interested in trusted climbing equipment. Inveneo’s Haitian partner, Transversal, continues to use the training and equipment they received on a daily basis as they roll out and maintain remote tower sites.

As we move forward in 2012, Inveneo will be expanding our work on broadband networks in East Africa. The investment in the Petzl-Inveneo training will continue to provide security, confidence, and dividends in many countries and for many people.