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Past, present, and future [2022-02-25]

The last few weeks have seen a lot of activity for Reneal Team Tanzania, as well as here at Reneal headquarters.  It is a continuous challenge to balance our work’s past, present and future: maintenance of existing computer labs, installing new labs, and scouting for candidate schools for expansion.  We have made great progress since the last blog post in each of these areas.

Earlier this month, Reneal and our partners from Habari Node and Arusha Node Marie installed a new computer lab at Oldonyowas Secondary School.  Oldonyowas is a relatively new school in Arusha District.  It is very remote and serves students in the northern part of the district.  We are excited to bring computers to these students who have very limited resources.  Oldonyowas was the last of our 2021 Phase 2 projects, generously supported by donations from Apto Solutions (www.aptosolutions.com).  Reneal Country Director David Nyangaka has been working closely with the Phase 3 schools as they prepare their computer rooms for deployment.  We expect six Phase 3 installations to be happening soon!

Meanwhile, Reneal’s very capable technicians are making beginning-of-the-school-year visits to each of the existing Renea computer labs.  During these visits, they ensure that the student files from 2021 are archived, a new student list is created, and that the lab is in perfect working order.  This is no small task, given how remote many of the schools are.  Our goal was to have these visits done by the end of February.  This work will slip into March, but we are on a good path to have it finished soon. 

Reneal considers this on-going support and partnership with each school to be an absolutely essential part of our effort.  While the Reneal system is low-maintenance, it is not yet no-maintenance.  Thus it is vital to make these visits periodically to make sure the labs are running at full strength.  Not every visit brings good news, for sure, but it is vital that we know – good or bad – what is happening so we can ensure that the equipment is used properly and fully.

The other big current task is identifying candidates for the 2022 projects.  We are so excited that Apto Solutions will be supporting Reneal again with computer hardware this year, so David has been visiting schools and gathering data to decide where Reneal will invest.  We are hoping to install an additional 19 computer labs in late 2022 and early 2023, thanks to Apto Solutions, and David has already identified many schools that may meet Reneal’s criteria. 

(Photo: Installation work in progress at Oldonyowas Secondary School)