Junior I-Network Uganda goes rural!

Introduction
The Junior I-Network holiday camp was held at St. Henrys Kitovu in Masaka District. The camp lasted for a week from Sunday, January 11th 2004, to Saturday, February 17th 2004. This report presents the activities that took place at the camp. The report begins with a background to the Junior I-Network.

Background
The I- Network is a body which aims at disseminating ICT information to the masses. The Junior I-Network is a node of the I-Network, The Junior I-Network’s vision was to go out to rural schools and enlighten disadvantaged children about the basics of ICTs and how these ICTs can be used for education and development thus the theme “ICTs for Development”. SchoolNet Uganda was invited as a project partner so together we lay down a program and started to make arrangements for five holiday camps, which would take place simultaneously within a period of two weeks in different parts of Uganda.

The five regions were named as follows: North, West, East, Central, and Kampala. Within these regions we identified schools that had Internet connectivity so that these schools could host the camp and invite two students each from 15 surrounding schools. The host schools were Lango College for the North, Busoga College Mwiri for the East, Ntare School for the West, St. Henrys Kitovu for the Central region and Aga- Khan High School for Kampala.

We sent out letters to these schools inviting them to the camps in their respective regions but due to poor timing most of the letters reached late. With this we found that in some regions like the North, we had response from only one school. This was due to the communication barrier for most of the students didn’t have home contacts and neither did they have e-mail addresses; their only link was the school and holidays having begun didn’t make it any simpler.

Having realized this problem we decided to have one camp and bring together all the students who had managed to contact us. We decided to have the camp at St. Henry’s Kitovu because they were quick at responding and the geographical location of the school is also favorable. 44 students showed up out of the 50 students who had indicated interest, 15 girls and 29 boys. The students came from Kabale, Kisoro, Mbarara, Gulu, Soroti, Wakiso, Kampala, Jinja, Masaka and Mubende districts.

Aims/Objectives
The aim of this holiday camp was to start a building block for the Junior-I-Network node in the hope of developing a program that would lead to other Junior I-Network activities and a continuous learning process for the children.

We aimed at covering at least every region within Uganda so that the benefits could be balanced and shared by a good number of people.

Each camp day apart from Friday had a theme and these were Health, Agriculture, Environment and Education respectively from Monday to Thursday. On Friday it was winding up of the weeks activities.

The general idea was that in the morning a presentation would be made to the students to enlighten them about the theme of the day and its relation to ICTs. After break tea the students researched about their given topics in five groups and after lunch they would then make presentations to the rest about their findings.

This was aimed at equipping the students with general skills such as Eloquence, Public speech, Self-esteem/confidence, Art of sharing and most of all peer-to-peer training.

Camp week
This section presents details on the daily activities. Students received five meals a day (breakfast, break tea, lunch, evening tea and super). They also had time for sports such as volleyball, football, table tennis, Netball and a variety of board games.

Day one
The students introduced themselves in what we called “collaborative introductions” this meant that each student had an opportunity to introduce another other than the other way round. They were required to state their friends’ school, dislikes and likes, fears and expectations. This gave us an opportunity to know each of their expectations and fears it also helped them to know more about each other within a short while.

After this Ms. Natalie Kimbugwe gave an introduction of I-Network, Mr. Daniel Kakinda gave a presentation about Schoolnet and Mr. Ssenkubuge an introduction about St Henry’s Kitovu. After break the D.E.O of Masaka who had then arrived gave a speech where he said that this generation is very lucky because some of the older generation never got this opportunity while they were still young. He said that he left school in 1969 and yet computer in Uganda started in the 1980s. He said that people who know the use of information find life very easy, He also said that the use of technology could take you places. He urged the children not to miss anything saying that they should leave when they are far richer than they came. He also said that education is about what you have to help you live and also help others to live.

Day one was one of the most tasking days of the camp considering the fact that the students were still new to each other, their surroundings and the things that were expected of them. During their introductions many of them wanted to know more about computers and different computing programs other than ICTs as a whole. The theme of the day being Health, Mr. Ssenkubuge made a presentation about AIDS, which included things like AIDS treatment, abstinence, and prevention. The children were given topics for research, which they later presented in PowerPoint. Most of their presentations were not well done because they were not conversant with PowerPoint and also the time was not enough since we had lost some time we therefor spent a few more hours in the lab trying to perfect the presentations.

In the evening after super we assigned the students with exercises and also gave them an opportunity to do their own research till about 9:00pm.

Day Two
The theme for this day was agriculture and was presented by Mr. Njala (a teacher at St. Henry’s Kitovu). On this day the children had more time on their hands since we had no introductions to make and also they were now more comfortable with their surroundings. The day went on as planned with the presentation in the morning, the research before lunch and the childrens presentations after lunch.

Day three
The theme for day three was Environment; we had two presentations on this day, one from St Henry’s Kitovu and one from Nature Uganda this is because the presenters from Nature Uganda arrived a-bit late. The presentations made however rotated around Habitat, wetlands, environment and leisure, tourism, environmental degradation and the like. Students were shown how ICT tools like binoculars could be used to study the environment Mr. Achilles Byaruhanga of Nature Uganda also showed the students digital compasses that can be used to locate the geographical position. The students also took a nature walk to actually see how these gadgets work. Some of the active students even won journals.

Day Four
This day was dedicated to the Education theme and this was taken over by Schoolnet Uganda. Mr. Daniel Kakinda and Richard made the presentations. Richard is one of Schoolnets examples of children who have benefited from their practices and have gone to other countries to represent Uganda. On this day the students were signed in to iearn so that they can communicate with other students all over the world by joining projects and being actively involved.

Day Five
On day five Hon. Johnson Nkuuhe gave a presentation about the basics of ICTs and the way forward. He asked the students what they were planning to do from this day onward to which some of them replied that they were going to start computer clubs in their schools and help others benefit by giving them all the necessary addresses. On this day we helped those who did not have e-mail addresses to sign up and registered all of them. We also let them answer the evaluation form on line so that they could see how ICTs can be used for such purposes. At the closing dinner we gave out certificates to both facilitators and students, 7 t-shirts were also given out to the best students who were selected by their fellow students on merit. After this the students went back to the computer lab to finalize their addresses, evaluation forms and presentations that were not properly complete. We retired to bed and left the following morning at 7:00am.

Way Forward
We are going to carry out a follow up process for this junior node through other seminars, workshops, and camps. We also plan to have radio and Television shows or a newsletter for the children.

We however would like the children to start contributing at least to half of their fares so that the financial strain is not too big.

For those who did not attend the holiday camp we hope will benefit from these other programs that we have put forward.

We hope that in time to come we will also be able to bridge the poverty and unemployment gap by exposing these children to potential opportunities.

Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to say that the camp was very successful, all facilitators were very helpful. The students too were a good lot and I believe we met our objectives to a certain extent I have no complaints at all. By the end of the camp most of the students were more interested in learning more about ICTs as a whole and not necessarily computer. It was not perfect of course but anything that did not go right I believe can easily be handled the next time. My sincere thanks to all those that made this camp a success and we hope to have another camp in midyear 2004. For the students who attended this camp you are very welcome for the next.

Evaluation holiday camp by Carol Nabatanzi