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Global Classroom: Camara

By Blathnaid Healy, RTÉ.ie Journalist, in Mombasa

Hamida Ahmed never touched a computer up until a month and a half ago. Now, not only is she learning how to use one, but she is also training to repair and refurbish them.

The 30-year-old from Mombasa attends free training classes at Irish charity Camara's 'digital hub', which she hopes will help her to get a job in computer maintenance.

'You can touch it, use it, and learn more about it,' Hamida says. 'The more you learn, the more it becomes easier.'

Hamida is just one of dozens of women and men who attend free computer training classes at Camara's 'digital hub'.

Camara takes used computers, refurbishes them, adds open-source and educational software, ships them to Africa and distributes them among schools and community groups.

It has sent computers to Ethiopia, Uganda, Lesotho, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, and Rwanda in the past three years.

Until recently the computers it shipped to east Africa had to be refurbished in Ireland, but that is changing.

Earlier this year Camara acquired some unused out-buildings at the Sheikh Khalifa Secondary School, in the suburbs of the port city of Mombasa. Here the charity put down roots in a move that strengthens its presence in east Africa.

Partnering with the school's old pupils' association, SKOSA, the 'digital hub' was created as a place to refurbish and maintain computers shipped from Ireland.

It also provides a place where locals can be trained

The charity took a leap forward this year after receiving its biggest private donation to date.

The Iris O'Brien Foundation, a organisation set up in the name of billionare Denis O'Brien's mother, has committed to give the charity €100,000.

This funding will be used to help Camara with its goal of sending 25,000 computers to Africa each year, one it hopes to reach starting in 2013.

People power

Fariq Ali At the beginning of this year, Farid Ali (left), a Somalian-born and Irish-educated Camara volunteer, left Ireland for Mombasa taking on the challenging role of getting the new digital hub up and running (click here to watch Farid Ali's full interview).

Some three months down the line and the workshop has more than 1,000 local volunteers.

The willingness Kenyans showed to volunteer for free at the hub was surprising to Farid, but he always believed there was a wealth of technology-centred talent in the area.

People like Abdul, who Farid met when he spoke at his village appealing for volunteers, have demonstrated the area's level of interest in technology.

Abdul immediately took to working with, and refurbishing computers - he describes himself as a 'keen volunteer'.

Since he signed on to volunteer he hasn't missed a single day at the workshop.

'I came to the hub and found it to be too marvellous to me,' Abdul said. 'I saw things I never thought I would see with my own eyes.'

What Abdul found to be so marvellous was the opportunity to train and become more knowledgeable about computers. He, like many of the volunteers, could not afford to go down the path of formal tuition, but still yearned to become more educated.

Although there is no cost for the tuition received, there are still costs associated with attending classes to the hub.

The volunteers pay the equivalent of up to 50c a day to take a matatu, a type of public transport in Kenya, from their villages to the workshop each day. This is a lot of money for many of the volunteers come up with, but most manage to find it.

In late April Kenya's matatu drivers went on strike and the few that stayed on the roads in Mombasa doubled their fares. But volunteers like Abdul did not let this stop them. They kept on coming to the hub every day.

The more local volunteers like Abdul that Camara brings on board at the hub the more sustainable the project will become and the less it will rely on people in Ireland.

Technology of today

25 year-old Fatima, the Co-ordinater for the Muslim Education & Welfare Association's (MEWA) Computer Training Programme, highlights equipment failures as the main difficulty she has encountered.

Camara has fully equipped the MEWA teaching facility where students pay a third of what they would pay elsewhere for a computer training course that teaches them some key skills.

When the students first begin their training programme, they have to start with the basics of locating the power button on the machine and switching it on.

'It is the technology of today,' Fatima says. '(Computers are) the skill that every employee asks for when you go for a job in any field.'

Fatima encourages her students to use the computers for their future jobs, but also to advises them to use the Internet to seek out sponsors or scholarships for pursuing further education.

When they finish the computer programme many will advance to the Mombasa Polytechnic, where they can study computing or business studies, or begin jobs. Few will go on to other third-level education courses because it is too expensive and out of most families reach.

Community groups like Faces and Places are doing their part to facilitate jobs in Mombasa.

The young people who use this group based near the city centre in Mombasa work in fast-moving direct sales where they sell products like kitchen implements door-to-door.

Camara has recently joined up with the community group fitting out a small computer lab with almost a dozen computers connected to the Internet, allowing Faces and Places to offer computer training to youths in the area for free.

'We never used to have computers, but now every youth around this area can come and share ours,' said Samuel Kamal the director of Faces and Places. 'It will keep the youths busy from being outside and doing drugs and many other things that are not profitable to them'

People in the area have reacted positively to the new computers and with more people than computers, the centre is needs further units.

Samuel says Kenya has been stuck in the nineteenth century for some time, but having access to computers is helping them to take steps towards the 21st century.

'If you cannot go to America, but you can browse America on your screen it makes the world like a small village,' Samuel says. 'It is a very big eye-opener for people.'

An east African base

The sustainability of Camara in east Africa to provide computers to groups like MEWA and Faces and Places greatly depended on finding a physical base for its operations.

Outside the Sheikh Khalifa a large, bright green cargo container with the Camara logo stencilled on its side sits in the yard to the back of the 'digital hub'. In the dusty grass courtyard to the front cows and goats wander.

Inside the buildings, which were used as electrical and metalwork workshop labs before the subject was taken off Kenya's curriculum, there is a constant hum from the ceiling fans, which wage a battle against the high temperatures aided by the heat of the computers.

There are brightly painted Camara signs at the front and back entrances to the buildings.

Inside, the hub is spacious, with high ceilings, stone floors, white-washed walls and lines of tall work benches.

It is still in the early stages of its development, but the secondary school's past pupils are keen to see that the hub reaches its full potential.

SKOSA Secretary Rishad Rajab Ramadhan (right) teaches Arabic and religious studies at the school. He says his members, having finished school and found good work, feel they want to give back to the local community.

During a chance meeting in Mombasa, Rishad ran into Farid and the relationship between the old pupil's society and the Irish charity began.

Rishad said that he too has become more interested than he ever was before in technology since Camara set-up in Mombasa.

He believes knowledge of computer skills is vital and points to how everything, including the banks and port in Mombasa, are now computerised.

'In the next ten years if you don't know computers you will be phased out,' he says.

Rishad cares a lot about what the future holds for Kenyans and this interest extends beyond his home city.

He wants to see Camara expand to offer computers to all parts of Kenya (click here to watch Rishad's full interview).

Offering more

Realising that expansion is perhaps the charity's biggest challenge.

Camara needs more computers, money and manpower to ramp-up its operation.

In 2007, Camara sent 3,000 computers to Africa, and in five years it aims to equip 1,000 computer labs every year.

One day Camara would like to reach the point where it dispatches container loads of computers to be refurbished in African hubs like the one in Mombasa - and this has started since the beginning of the year.

Former investment banker Cormac Lynch (left) exchanged the world of finance for development work.

He set up Camara three years ago and is now the CEO of the charity.

Cormac says the charity is not sending out computers, but is instead dispatching educational tools. He believes education is the only way African countries can break the cycle of poverty.

'Unless we can provide and help Africans build their education systems today, in ten years time you still will have people starving to death' said Cormac (click here to watch his full interview).

The refurbishment and shipment of each computer costs approximately €55. To cover this Camara asks people who donate a computer to also give €20 toward the total cost.

When the computers are distributed in Africa, Camara charges the equivalent of €5 per unit, leaving a balance of €35 per computer - which has to be covered by the charity.

'For €35 we can send out a library, which is a wonderful tool and it is hard to argue against,' said Cormac.

While the donation from the Iris O'Brien Foundation and ongoing support from Irish Aid are helping the charity to meet the €35 cost, Camara wants to make its operation in Kenya and other hubs in Uganda, Ethiopia and Lesotho more financially sustainable.

It is with this aim in mind that it has developed a piece of open-source software to be used by Internet cafes.

In recent months there have been reports of Internet cafes in Mombasa being penalised by a major software company for using unauthorised versions of software on their computers. The crackdown led Camara to develop specific software, which it could sell at a low cost to the cafes. The funds generated are going back into the hub.

Camara board member Dr Gary McDarby (right) hopes that more initiatives like this one could help the Kenyan hub become more financially sustainable (click here to watch his full interview or listen to his 28 July 2008 interview on Today with Pat Kenny).

In high demand

Everyday, Camara gets an email from an educational institution or community group looking for computers. As word of the charity continues to spread around Africa, the demand is only set to increase.

At present Ireland is the charity's only source for used computers.

It estimates that we will throw out one million units over the next five years.

CEO Cormac Lynch says there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to educate Irish businesses not to recycle their computers, but instead reuse them.

More than half of the computer shipped out so far have come from Government departments. AIB is another large donor of equipment, but a societal shift is needed in the commercial sector for things to change dramatically.

If Camara can get a good model working in Ireland, Cormac says it could be quite easy to replicate it in other countries.

At the moment the charity has a small number of full-time staff.

It relies on its large group of volunteers who spend weekday evenings and Saturday afternoons refurbishing computers at the Dublin and Belfast workshops.

In his day job, Kevin McLaughlin works as a teacher at San Carlo National School in Leixlip, Co Kildare, home of chip manufacturing giant Intel, but for his second year he will spend part of his summer volunteering in Africa for Camara.

Kevin says that having access to technology 'motivates' people and is a very useful tool for teaching.

Last year, Kevin went to Kenya where he co-ordinated training sessions for organisations receiving computers and this year he travelled to Rwanda.

Rwanda is a new country for Camara this year. It does not have any plans to move into new countries. Instead it is aiming to consolidate its bases.

Increasing the number of computers it sends from 3,000 computers to 25,000 over the next five years is a big challenge for the Irish charity, but with a dedicated base of volunteers like Kevin in Ireland and Abdul in Kenya, Camara will have plenty of help at hand.

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