Our Vision
263 Million Children and Youth were out of school in 2015
But that is not the only problem – in 2015 alone, only 50% of refugee children were enrolled in primary education, 62.5 million children who were out of school worldwide lived in 32 countries affected by conflict and 41% of all out-of-school children of primary school age had never attended school. So why is this the case?
Sitting across from the head monk of the Taw Tike Monastic School in Myanmar, my home country, he explained the dilemma a family faced during the aftermath of cyclone Nargis -- choosing between spending their limited income on food for cyclone victims or sending their children to school.
420 million people would be lifted out of poverty with a secondary education. If we want to eradicate poverty in our lifetimes, the change needs to start from us. By sharing our passions, skills and knowledge online, together we can bring education to every child in the world.
How We Started
In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, families all over Myanmar had to chose between feeding their family or funding their child’s education.
We wanted to change this and enable more students worldwide to share their passions and learn from each other using the power of technology.
Back in 2015, Trinity founded GirlsforCS to encourage more girls to study computer science, though running coding workshops in local schools in Hong Kong and the UK. Recognizing the importance of computer literacy skills to students and workers everywhere, she looked for ways to export this knowledge abroad, through building podcasts.
Today we are a group of students determined to enable more children to gain access to basic education and to enable more people to share their passions and learn from each other through building our podcast program -- Edsity.
Our Projects
Edsity:
This projects stems from an initiative we started at GirlsforCS. This is our story:
July 2015 -- Trinity, our founder, visited Myanmar. She noticed that although many people had smartphones, there was low awareness of internet safety across the country, and internet connection was still relatively limited. At schools she noticed that because local monastic schools relied solely on donation, teachers were not well trained thus quality of education was poor.
August 2015 -- Inspired by the experience, the GirlsforCS podcasts program was founded: we built podcasts in Burmese to teach basic computer literacy, working with charities and local schools to get the information to students across Myanmar.
2016 -- Our partners help to spread the podcasts to schools in Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Malawi, and Zambia. Our podcasts were translated into Vietnamese, Khmer, Hindi and English.
2017 -- Smartphone penetration in Myanmar increased from 10% in 2011 to 90% in 2016, meaning that more people across the country are now digitally connected.
August 2017 -- Inspired to utilise the power of increasing digital connectivity in the developing world and Jeffrey Sachs's article "Data for Development" , we decided to build alternative content to enhance our podcast program.
Today -- We build videos, gifs, audio podcasts, cartoon strips and articles on basic health, basic economic theories, environmental conservation, and more to do our best to bring education to every child in the world.
Our Other Projects:
Featured
Our Team: Trinity Donohugh, Dina Zulqaisar, Clara Lenherr, Isabelle Zhang, Margaret Yiwen Lu
More information on the project: United Nations youth assembly
We have decided to make all the podcasts we have created over the years available here so that you can download it for your own use or to share knowledge and information around the world. If you have any questions, suggestions, or just want to send us something interesting feel free to email girlsforcs@gmail.com (we will still be checking that account terminally)
*note: we are only able to make public podcasts that we have made in Burmese (other language podcasts have been created in partnership with other organisations thus we don't have sole ownership of the content)
To access the podcasts you can download them from the Google Drive link or our Facebook page