Tanzania at last! The journey has been a bit more protracted than expected, but we’re closing in on full arrival. Today, our first full day, got us right in the middle of it all with a blizzard of impressions and experiences.
It’s been a blizzard of box-packing this last week. Ten more boxes of donated computer equipment departed for the Philippines on Tuesday, joining 10 others shipped in the previous few weeks. We have just about completing our prepositioning for the 2015 projects in Cebu! And now eight more boxes are neatly stacked for Monday’s departure for Tanzania, along with a growing pile of personal gear (not so neatly stacked…) that will be packed tomorrow. Yes, at last we are on the brink of beginning the long-planned 2014 Tanzania projects!
Stacks of desktops to test and prepare for shipping… A big line of monitors sitting nearby for packing… Numerous empty boxes addressed and waiting for contents… Yes, lots of work ahead but what a thrill to know that the Reneal IEO 2015 project plan for the Philippines is now fully resourced! The trip to Ft. Collins this week resulted in 40 used desktop computers and 20 used flat panel monitors receiving new life helping students in high schools in the Philippines.
Another busy week here, culminating with a Reneal IEO Board meeting this afternoon. We are excited and pleased to welcome a new member to the board, Steve Guerzon. Our deepest thanks go to out-going board member Antonio Martinez for 2 years of dedicated service. Antonio’s insightful questions and attention to detail were an essential part of getting Reneal IEO started on a good trajectory. We are grateful for his contributions!
It’s been a great week here. Five large boxes of equipment just shipped out today to Cebu for the 2015 Philippines projects. This included most of the 15 wonderful desktops just granted by Free Geek in Portland (www.freegeek.org) plus a batch of monitors that we received through a connection with Alum Rock United Methodist Church in San Jose. Next week’s chore will be to box up the servers, monitors, and network switches for the five new 2015 high schools and get them underway to the Philippines. And of course, the Tanzania trip looms so we’ll be getting things packed up for that soon.
I am so excited to report that the Reneal IEO warehouse (also known as our home…) is filled to bursting right now with computer equipment for our 2014 Tanzania projects and 2015 Philippines projects. Just yesterday, Reneal IEO board member Priscilla Batty delivered 15 used desktop computers to us, a hardware grant from the wonderful Free Geek organization in Portland, OR. Happily though, the next few weeks will see almost all of this equipment flow out the door to schools in developing countries.
Neal and I have taken some vacation in the last couple of weeks, but our intern Jade and former student Jillian have kept the Reneal IEO wheels turning smoothly in the Philippines. Jade and Jillian visited Tayud National High School in Consolacion, one of our 2014 projects, to see if anything needed to be changed or fixed. They also met with the Computer Student Specialist (CSS) group at Tayud.
Jade has been coordinating trips with each of our 2014 schools to see if they are having any issues that require maintenance. Yesterday's trip to Daanbantayan National High School was combined with a visit to Kawit National High School, one of our 2015 projects. Jade was joined by Reneal IEO Team members Jillian and Ma'am Nerry and our colleague Ma'am Lisa from Compostela National H
Neal has been working hard recently on a new capability for the school IT labs, a video streaming program. A teacher can set up a video on one computer, and it will be displayed on all of the monitors in the lab for students to view simultaneously. The teacher can pause the video at any time to interject comments or engage in discussion. With the wonderful Khan Academy collection of videos (www.khanacademy.org), teachers in many different subject areas can now provide new, rich resources to their students. The Reneal IEO server has thousands of videos stored locally, so even schools without internet can have this capability!
Neal and I have been truly fortunate to connect with Kids on Computers (www.kidsoncomputers.org), like Reneal IEO a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization committed to bringing computers and e-learning resources to students and teachers in schools in developing countries. A few months ago KoC pointed us to the fantastic RACHEL educational resources (http://www.worldpossible.org/rachel/) that we’ve now loaded on the Reneal IEO server. Last Sunday evening we had a chance to meet with the KoC founders and some of their board members and volunteers to share stories and information, from top-level strategy to down-in-the-weeds software nuggets.