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THE AMAZING Sote ICT STUDENTS’ TRAINING COMPANIES TRADE FAIR, APRIL 10, 2015.

The big day finally arrived. Who was to be left out? Students from ten Sote Ict sponsored schools arrived to show their entrepreneurial skills. Important guest like Taita Taveta County Governor Hon. John Mtuta Mruttu, the Slovak-Kenya Ambassador His Excellency Mr. Michal Mlynar with his family and Miss Tourism Taita Taveta were not left behind amid principals and teachers from the ten schools.

It was a busy day with students, teachers, guests and the jurors moving up and down the stalls taking a look at what the various student companies presented. It was quiet tricky for the jurors to decide which companies were to carry the day since the competition was stiff as all the companies had good ideas and ways of approach. The students on the other hand had a hard time since they did not know who the jurors was and had to give their best at all the times.

During the lunch break students took their lunch while the Ambassador, His Excellency the Governor, Miss Tourisim Taita Taveta and some of the Sote Ict Officials had a small chat over lunch.

After lunch it was time to hear the speeches and everyone gathered in the presentation hall. David Ogiga gave the opening speech and welcomed Miss Tourism Taita Taveta who gave an amazing speech. Hon. John Mruttu then took his turn and gave an outstanding speech appreciating the students efforts. He promised to support the Sote Ict Foundation and offered a grand prize of ksh 10,000 to InfoTech Company who shot a video of the whole event.

His Excellency  the Ambassador of  Slovak-Kenya then took the stage and gave out a remarkable speech and thanked everyone for their input. He also thanked the Slovak Ministry of Foreign affairs for their support altogether with the Pontis Foundation. Though his term of service in Kenya will be ending later on this year, he promised to keep in touch. Finally Ivka Ulicna  from Pontis Foundation gave her speech and awarded the best companies and individuals who took home: Certificates, trophies and other prizes.

Bishop Lemera from Mwakitawa Sec School closed the ceremony with a short prayer and everyone departed with beautiful memories engraved forever in their minds.

To view the amazing photos of the day:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/131873900@N08

 Blog by Kelvin Woresha Mwangemi

(Volunteer Sote ICT Project)

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Gift’s Impressions from Sep/October: Training Companies at 9 Schools Improved Their Administration

Documentation is one of the most essential things in any company, organization or institution to run their daily operations and long-term activities smoothly and effectively in this world.

With this intention, I decided with soteICT team to come up with series of trainings of proper administration of training companies at ten schools in Taita Taveta who are in soteICT project. Trainings on financial and marketing documents and their administration shall strengthen departments of companies and improve the practical skills of students. Our trainings  will give the students the power to explore and acquire various skills on how to create simple and basic business documents like invoice, purchase order, sales receipt, business cards, brochures, delivery note among the other business documents hence resulting to the really simulation of business transactions.

During this September/ October training students from training companies have managed to create these business documents for their companies which were good although not that perfect. But with the students’ workshop which was held in Chala Secondary school and several trips around the schools, by Gift Mtambo, Jakub Simek and David Ogiga managed to correct and give advice to students on how to create the best out of the good business documents they already had.

Filing system is also one of the important things in any company to know its progress. Without a good and appropriate storage of the records or the important documents in a company it is difficult to move forward and progress well. To avoid collapsing of the companies it is good now to have an efficient filing system which will enable the companies’ owners and staff to track if their companies’ are progressing well or not by accessing reference from the records that they have filed. Filing can either be done in soft copy that is storing records in computers, flash disks etc. Or as hard copy that is storing the documents in folders. To highlight the major importance of having an efficient filing system in the companies is that it gives future reference and outline clearly the progress of the company, that is if it making loss or profit or if it is progressing well or not. Also in connection to that it saves time when you want to retrieve or access the records or the document quickly. In that in mind soteICT team also decided to put the filing system program go hand in hand with the documentation training  so that to strengthen further the performance of our training companies and the students.

Pictures showing documentation and filing training at Buguta and Mwakitawa sec. school facilitated by Gift Mtambo.

As a result of that training, now almost all the ten schools have managed to create their business documents and established the efficient filing system for their training companies which is one step that we have managed to archive during this September/ October period.

Some of the training companies like Safari Kenya and Invest Taita in PJ Mwangola Secondary, Mshindi KCB and Rainbow Printing in Marungu Secondary have started doing business transactions using their documents that they have created at school level which is really good. Coming next school year we want to encourage the simulation of the real business transactions using the business documents among the training companies in all the schools. For example Tsavo Ecovilla Company at Moi High School will cooperate with Ummoja Decoration Company in Murray Girls High School and do the business transactions. These improvements, besides giving students the practical skills for their future jobs, will also help in the process of certification of training companies in Practice Enterprise Network.

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Marolyne Achieng: A Short Story of Ambassadors of Change Trip to Nairobi

On Thursday morning three of the ambassadors of change, namely; Zuwena, Irene and Marolyne left Murray Girls High School for Voi. We arrived there by 10:30am meeting four other ambassadors; Emily, Peter, Hezron and Robert.  We were seven in total under the lead of Madam Christine Kilimo from Kajire Girls High School. The Coast Bus arrived at around 12:00 noon and we boarded it for Nairobi .The journey was long and tiresome but we decided to make it lively by chit chat about life in our schools and companies. We had a lunch break at Mtito   Andei and set off again for Nairobi arriving nearly at dusk.

One remarkable difference between Nairobi and Taita is the near gridlock of vehicles. In Taita, you almost have the entire road to yourself which is quite the opposite of Nairobi with all the sea of humanity and cars!.  When we arrived, we were met by our host David Ogiga who became our wonderful host for the next 48 hours and managing the program.

By 7:15 the following day, we had already had breakfast, taken photographs and we were leaving for the United Nations .At the United Nations, there was tight security that I have never felt before.  Peterson from the Embassy of Slovakia became our companion for the UN section. We visited several places at the UN which we enjoyed. We saw art pieces the names of their donors and their meanings. It was also fun because we got some time to rest, take photographs, videos and watch television. We were also joined by a lady Chinese tour guide who was great and very social. The tour was very educative and the environment was conducive, green and clean. Later on, we left for United States International University (USIU). Almost same standards as UN, USIU is also very clean and organized and Peterson informed us that anyone who steps on grass is fine 2000/= on spot. This made us realize the reason for the tidiness of this place. The students were friendly and since it was Freida Brown Day. One thing in common was that we all wished to go to USIU or join Universities in Slovakia. First, my thought of joining USIU was because of the friendly students, the university has a good environment which is free from noise pollution providing it with a good environment for studies and besides they offer great courses like law and business studies. Alternatively, I wished to study in Slovak because I had heard a lot of good stories from both Ivana and David. Some were like the good facilities, very good education especially for those studying medicine, the whole country is clean and the people are friendly to each other and to foreigners.

From here we drove to the Slovak Embassy, an opportunity to meet the Ambassador Dr. Michal Mlynar and this was meant to be our highlight. We were ushered in by the secretary and we all sat anxiously waiting to see the ambassador. Soon, the ambassador came in. Mr. David introduced us to the ambassador as the young ambassadors of change. I felt so proud of that title and immediately thought of my mum who has been my pillar and supporter. The real ambassador, Mr. Michal Mlynar spoke to us on varied life issues, mentoring us on careers and how we can positively change the society. We also asked him personal and general questions and we were impressed at the ease he shared with us and the genuine interest in our work. We felt so proud. The ambassador awarded us with certificates and officially conferred to us the titles ‘Ambassadors of Change’. To cap it all, we each got gift bags and took several pictures in the serene embassy. The highlight was shaking the ambassador’s hand of course!

 It was already running late for our last activity. So we left the embassy and drove to iHub centre, Ngong Road. The iHub community is mostly dominated by young people serious with innovation and technology. I was glad to hear that when there was post election violence in Kenya, iHub offered a solution through ushahidi platform which helped map out violence hotspots helping in rescue operations. There were several companies too. Another company, Akirachix works with young female graduates turning them into techies. This made me feel at home because Beauty and Brains; the company I work with back in school deals with the empowering of the African woman through our designs. We also went to the XLab, GSM which make sim cards, the photo shooting area and the balcony where one could rest after research and view the landscape of Nairobi. One thing that was common among all the youths at ihub is that each of them expressed their work with passion and happiness. I wished my fellow classmates could be there but in mind I had a lot to tell as soon as I got back to school. The iHub had innovative services like the m-pesa and application of software. We all looked forward to joining iHub as soon as we were done with high school. Girls also have an advantage because there is free scholarship for young girls. What a great day it was! After such unbelievable trip, David took us to a restaurant where we had pizzas which was a first one for some of the ambassadors. Again it was opportunity for David who asked us how students and teachers used the computers, projectors and smart boards that we were offered by the Slovak Aid funding. He was glad to hear how much they were of help. We left for our hotel and after supper, we discussed what we had learned, watched television and slept. We woke up early on Saturday morning, prepared ourselves, had breakfast and left for coast bus station, took farewell photographs and sadly left for Voi. Everyone wished Zuwena success in her exams because she was going to sit for a French paper on Tuesday. Immediately I arrived back to school, I joined iHub as a white member. Thankyou soteICT!

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Impressions from our June trainings and school visits in Kenya

Last week  three of Slovaks from our soteICT team returned from Kenya with lots of new experiences and notes from ten secondary schools we visited. Teacher Daniela Skladanova and co-owner of the eTechnology company Juraj Kopani joined together with Jakub Simek from Pontis Foundation our team in Kenya for ten days from 25 June to 8 July and trained teachers and students at five new schools in our programme from Taita Taveta about project-based teaching, new educational tools and student training company methodology.  Here are some observations and notes:

The five new schools in the soteICT program are catching up

Every school has a unique challenges and position. Some like Buguta and Mwangola Secondary are relatively young schools and didn’t have any ICT equipment before our cooperation. Others had some computers and even projectors but the IT integration into teaching of other subjects besides Computer Studies and extra-curricular activities wasn't that developed. But thanks to intensive mentoring by our colleague Ivka Ulicna all soteICT Clubs and student training companies now have regular activities and clear structure and joined the five older schools in our three competitions in: promotional videos for training companies, CV writing and the Ambassadors of Change Essays. The training on project-based teaching by Daniela was meant to inspire the teachers of other subjects to use ICT in their projects and increase cooperation with other colleagues and even other schools, be it in Taita Taveta County or Slovakia. Juraj trained teachers on a proper use of various combinations of ICT tools in the classroom – eBeam interactive whiteboard, AVerVision document camera and the Data Harvest measuring equipment. We encouraged teachers to give special assignments to soteICT Clubs at their schools and use their assistance in preparing presentations and other teaching materials.

Regular teacher meetings are necessary to increase cooperation and best practice transfer

After the first and smaller meeting this March we held on 6 June the second brainstorming and networking session with teachers from 10 schools in our soteICT program and spend a whole afternoon on discussions and sharing of ideas how to improve the various levels of our cooperation. For example Marungu is really good in ICT integration and all teachers have a schedule for computer room. They have also made a remarkable progress in their student training companies. Other schools like Kajire and Mwambiti excel in videos and presentations of their companies. A new school in the project - PJ Mwangola -  scored third with their videos promoting investment and tourism in Taita Taveta. Mwaghogho and Buguta reached out to neighboring primary schools and for example Buguta students from the ICT Club helped to train teachers at Buguta Primary which also benefited from the SlovakAid micro-grant and has a computer lab. Chala Secondary invested in satellite internet to make it faster than the mobile internet solution that we pay for because of sustainability and higher internet costs.

Plans for the third term and the next school year in Kenya

This school years student companies were active in marketing and competition but we want them to also get better at administrative processes and make the business simulation deeper. We agreed to proceed with some simple model business cases and negotiations between student companies from Kenya and/or Slovakia, where one company orders a product (e.g. advertising campaign) from another student company, that send an invoice that will be paid through an internet banking simulation and another student company Mshindi KCB.

During our trainings and school visits could see a real progress in almost all schools in terms of clear structure of their student companies and their products. Apart from measuring equipment for four new schools and Marungu we donated also various materials for student companies and  also four more Adruino starter kits and one Merkur construction set to support also the technical and science aspects of student clubs and reward active schools.The first Arduino and Raspberry Pi was given to Mwambiti and Lego Mindstrom set to Kajire to reward their student companies' winning videos in the first spring competition. We have encouraged the two student ICT clubs to meet together on the weekends and help each other in their construction projects.

We are looking forward for a close cooperation with Slovak schools also in the next school year when they open in September.