Gadget

Small tech difference makes a big human impact

Arthur Goldstuck

Meet Ansu Kandeh. He is a student at Kabala Secondary School, the oldest high school in the agricultural town of Kabala, in the rural north of Sierra Leone. Home to fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, the town does not have regular electricity, aside from generators powering some homes and institutions.

Internet access is almost unknown in Kabala. But Ansu is deeply ambitious, and wants to go to university when he completes school. When he discovered that the school had installed a device called RACHEL, that gives offline access to content that is usually available only online, he jumped at the chance to use it.

RACHEL stands for Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning. It is a portable computer box that stores educational websites to makes their content available over any offline wireless connection. In other words, a phone with Wi-Fi – but no Internet – can access a library of digital content.

Ansu quickly discovered:

The last was particularly compelling for Ansu, who has a passion for public speaking. He devoured TED  talks through the RACHEL device, using the techniques and skills he learned to become one of the best debaters, not only in his school, but in the entire district. Finally, he won a regional debating competition. 

“I have experienced a lot of positive changes in my life and my academic work since I started using the RACHEL,” he said. “Due to the increase in my academic performance in school, I was featured to be the senior prefect of my school.”

Not surprisingly, Ansu intends to pursue a degree in information, communications and technology.

His story was showcased at last week’s Cisco Live conference in Barcelona, where the prime focus was on new technology for making the Internet more effective, but corporate social responsibility initiatives were always at the forefront of activity and discussion.

Visit the next page to read about how RACHEL was born, Cisco’s conservation initiatives, and how RACHEL works.

How RACHEL was born

“We look holistically at what we’re doing with technology and how we can use it for good,” said Chintan Patel, chief technology officer for Cisco UK and Ireland. “Probably more importantly, we’re big believers as a company and as individuals that we should harness the power of connectivity and technology and deliver it to as many people as possible, because it can make the future better.

“But what we’re also acutely aware of is just providing connectivity, and just giving people that connectivity, won’t be enough. We need to provide the skills to be able to use that technology and do something with it, so that’s been the mission for our broader programs in the company.”

RACHEL wasn’t a Cisco project as such, but came about when a Cisco Systems engineer, Norberto Mujica, visited Ethiopia in 2008 to teach at a university. The establishment had a large number of computers – but no internet access. Mujica started with a simple solution: put together a collection of materials that could be stored on a server at the university, to give all students access to that content. 

But when he returned to Ethiopia with three Cisco colleagues, they realised that the idea could benefit all children and students. They founded a non-profit organisation (NPO) called World Possible. The inspiration for the name was entirely local: any suggestion they made to Ethiopians for overcoming technical challenges was met with the phrase “Possible, possible”. That optimism inspired the team to take their vision global.

It wasn’t plain-sailing, though. Venture capitalist Jeremy Schwartz joined the team as a volunteer director and led a mission to Sierra Leone the following year. However, it ended in failure as the country was still recovering from the aftermath of its disastrous civil war. 

But on the ground, RACHEL was quietly planting its own roots. It began taking off in Uganda, and media coverage of the initiative in that country revealed that there was still massive appetite for the solution. Schwartz quit his full-time job, and “rebooted” World Possible. Today it is active in 26 countries, including Namibia and a revived Sierra Leone roll-out.

While the project itself is not a Cisco initiative, the company has been fully supportive of its engineers’ participation. It is now funding a new project for World Possible that will allow the NPO to gather data from all of the RACHEL devices around the world. World Possible volunteers can visit a community with a RACHEL device, upload usage data from RACHEL devices onto Android phones, and aggregate it for analysis. 

“This is an exciting next step for us,” said Schwartz. “It will allow us to analyse what is being used and bring that data back to the content providers.” That, in turn, will allow providers of free content to adapt and refine their material to better meet the needs of users.

Visit the next page to read about Cisco’s conservation initiatives, and how RACHEL works.

Cisco’s conservation initiatives

Africa has been the inspiration for many Cisco initiatives. Sarah Eccleston, managing director and global chief technology office for commercial and small business at Cisco, spends much of her spare time on the continent, looking for ways to combine her love for both technology and endangered animals.

Sarah Eccleston, combining love of technology with conservation of animals. Pic: Arthur
Goldstuck

Two years ago, she spent a month living in an elephant orphanage in Zambia, and came up with the idea of connecting an elephant to the internet as part of an initiative to reduce ivory poaching. While that may have been a startling idea, it built on a conservation heritage at Cisco. 

In 2015, it partnered with one of South Africa’s most respected information technology companies, Dimension Data, to help protect and stop the poaching of rhino.  They launched Connected Conservation, starting with a pilot in a private game reserve next to the Kruger National Park.

The solution required installation of an advanced form of Wi-Fi, CCTV cameras, acoustic fibre surveillance, and electric fencing around the area. The impact was dramatic: in just one year, the number of rhinos poached from that reserve fell from 54 to zero. 

The team then worked with a South African non-profit at the Ezemvelo Nature Reserve, where they attached sensors to rhinos to measure heart rate and blood pressure – which can show signals of distress. This helps rangers identify possible poaching incidents without having to incur the high costs of monitoring an entire reserve.

“This, of course, is just the beginning,” says Maria Hernandez, a Cisco product sales specialist. “South Africa is just one country blighted by poaching, and we’re working on and planning several other conservation projects around the world. In Zambia, we’re using a boat tracking solution equipped with thermal cameras to monitor human movement to better protect the nation’s elephants.

“But there is still so much we can do, and we plan to continue to grow Connected Conservation through thoughtful partnerships which make a real difference. With the right tools, willpower and teamwork, we can help build a better future for these beautiful animals.”

Conservation of animals and sustainability of the human race go hand in hand, Chintan Patel pointed out.

“We have a big opportunity for technology to play a much bigger role in a much more sustainable future. We’re putting the building blocks in place now for what we believe the Internet and the future will need. We look forward to the bigger impact it will create.” 

Visit the next page to read about how RACHEL works.

How RACHEL works

Anyone can purchase RACHEL from an online store run by its creator, World Possible, at https://worldpossible.org/rachel. But it’s not a money-making exercise: the site even includes instructions for building one’s own version of RACHEL.

When it is switched on, anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device can look for “RACHEL” under the list of  Wi-Fi networks, connect to it, open a web browser and type the address listed on the device. This instantly gives access to offline versions of more than a hundred free educational websites, like Wikipedia and Khan Academy, without any data charges.

The RACHEL Plus device is simple, but with massive impact

For those with Internet access, a full list of these resources can be browsed from anywhere at the Open Educational Resources website. Visit http://oer2go.org. It ranges from African stories to world maps.

World Possible points out another massive benefit of its device: “RACHEL can instantly turn a graveyard of unused computers into a learning center. For the 53% of people around the world without an internet connection, RACHEL is a valuable tool that connects offline learners to the best free educational resources. RACHEL is rugged, lightweight, and designed to travel anywhere. RACHEL is used by schools, libraries, community centers, orphanages, and the NGOs supporting them all over the world.”

Two sizes are now available: RACHEL-Plus and RACHEL-Pi. Both come pre-loaded with content from OER2Go and a router that connects to multiple devices.

RACHEL-Plus includes these features:

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