Welcome to issue 105 of the Call to Comms!
This week, meet Rodin, who works at the ALABRI Center, a center for kids from disadvantaged families in Madagascar. He explains how the center meets essential needs to help young people concentrate better at school, and how it collaborates with TSF's digital inclusion center, the IT CUP center.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Meet Rodin
Can you tell us about yourself?
"I work at the ALABRI center as administrative manager and chair of the boards. I came into contact with Télécoms Sans Frontières in 2015 through the IT CUP center in Miarinarivo. It was a truly enriching experience for me, because it was the first time I was able to get used to technology.
Can you tell us about the Alabri Center?
In Madagascar, to continue secondary school education, students must move to the main town of the district - here, Miarinarivo. Sometimes there are difficulties with housing, food, and social support. That is why the NGO Ny Hary Deutschland set up the ALABRI Center to meet basic needs for young people from families in need.
“The goal is to provide stability at school and help young people concentrate better.”
How does the ALABRI Center meet needs?
- The youth center, which can accommodate 52 young people from families in need. The goal is to provide stability at school and help them concentrate better.
- The cafeteria, because sometimes, in Madagascar, malnutrition gets in the way of education. We work with schools to pick kids from families in need.
- Extracurricular activities. We offer around 52 activities.
- Environmental projects. We provide young plants to set up nurseries and give training on ecology.
- The scholarship program. In Madagascar, only 3-6% of students can attend university, so we work with partners to enable young people to continue their studies.
“The IT CUP center has resources to connect to the Internet in order to help young people develop their career plans.”
Inès Guittonneau
How do you see the role of digital technology?
There is another activity at the center: the “Mon r-essor-t” project. It is an entrepreneurial guidance project for young people. Our goal is to give young people ideas about starting businesses by promoting local resources.
Digital technology is really important for this project, because the young people design logos using free software and budget for their studies on Excel. Later on, we would like them to create websites for selling agro-processing products.
They can also use digital technology for research. We have set up a digital media library so that young people can use computers, search the Internet, and do their schoolwork.
Here in Madagascar, when it comes to internet research at school, there are no real references to verifiable sources. The risk is that there may be false information.
“The collaboration between the IT CUP center and the ALABRI center in Miarinarivo greatly helps young people to develop.”
How do the ALABRI Center and the IT CUP Center complement each other?
At the ALABRI center, young people are given information about choosing a career and planning for the future, but this remains theoretical if there are no partners who can provide resources for them to actually use computers and carry out reliable internet searches.
The IT CUP center has resources for connecting to the internet so that young people can plan their professional lives. There are also resources shared by AccesMAD for educational and career guidance. The sharing of available resources is really important for collaboration.
We have young people who participate in extracurricular activities, and the IT CUP center has the facilities and digital resources to provide an after-school tutoring system. The important thing here is that, through the ALABRI center, we can encourage young people to join the IT CUP center. The collaboration between the ITCUP center and the ALABRI center in Miarinarivo is helping young people to develop.
See you in two weeks!
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