Partnering to improve connectivity for Sky School programmes

Sky School is delighted to announce a partnership with Lenovo Foundation and Jangala. In our upcoming collaboration, we will work together to enable hundreds more displaced youth  in sub-Saharan Africa to access Sky School learning through technology. 

 Kakuma Camp and Kalobeyei Settlement  in Kenya and Malindza Refugee Camp in Swaziland are locations where Sky School has strong community partnerships and there is a lot of interest among displaced youth to participate in Sky School programmes. A key challenge which affects the work of our partners in these areas is low quality and expensive internet connectivity, which is needed for the online part of all Sky School courses.

Over the past year, Sky School has been working with Jangala to improve connectivity in Kakuma Camp, Kenya. Jangala is a UK-based not-for-profit whose mission is to enable internet access for people impacted by natural or man-made disasters. Jangala’s product, Big Box, is a lightweight briefcase-sized device that transforms any form of internet connectivity into Wi-Fi that is easily managed by teams on the ground and easily scaled from tens to thousands of users. Big Box eliminates the need for costly technical expertise and so radically lowers the barriers to deploying internet access across a range of challenging situations.

Sky School has worked with Jangala on providing internet connection to our partner, URISE for Africa, in Kakuma Camp in Kenya. In July 2018 the first box has been donated to Kakuma site and since then Jangala Box has emerged as a key tool in enabling us to roll out our blended learning model. 

With the support of the Lenovo Foundation, Jangala will develop three more Big Boxes to be used in Sky School sites in Kenya and Swaziland, and Lenovo will also donate laptops to these sites. This partnership will enable Sky School learners to gain affordable access to high quality internet as well as equip them with devices to complete the online portion of Sky School programmes successfully. 

We are excited about this partnership and the possibilities that lie ahead for improving connectivity as a means to enable access to high quality education.