Thursday, December 02, 2004
Schooling Their Resources
By Thrishni Subramoney, Highway Africa News Agency
Cape Town - If Santa Claus ever created a special IT deployment squad, it would probably be a bit like NetDay South Africa.
Armed with open source software and refurbished computers, the non-profit organisation has been sweeping through the country, setting up computer labs
free of charge in schools that are on the leaner end of the digital divide.
The group has set up a free Internet cafe on the outskirts of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference at the Cape Town Convention Centre, in the hopes of drawing more support for their initiative.
General Manager, Edward Holcroft says NetDay South Africa has deployed networks to more than 300 schools since it was created in 1996.
“All the schools have to provide is the room, the desks, electricity and security. We do the rest,” said Holcroft, chatting on the fringes of the ICANN conference.
NetDay is based on the US initiative by the same name - started in the nineties by a group of school teachers eager to introduce their pupils into the Information Communcation Technology (ICT) fold.
The South African version received funding from the International Development Research Centre until 2001. However, when the IDRC scaled back its South African operations, NetDay was forced to operate on business. It now does IT consulting on the side to support its projects and pay support staff.
While the use of refurbished hardware in developing countries has become a contentious issue of late, Holcroft said fixing up used machines has served a
two-fold purpose.
Not only does a poor school receive a free, high quality computer lab, the re-furbishing and installation process is used as a training ground for young people who want IT skills but cannot afford to high tertiary tuition fees.
One of the technicians behind the transformation is Tsholofele Tshenye who joined NetDay as a volunteer four years ago and was hired after six months by NetDay. He says he has enjoyed the experience immensely.
“I've been travelling almost everyday since I joined up, and I can now do anything that has to do with computers. I must've helped do more than a hundred deployments at schools since,” he said.
The fact that NetDay only uses open source software - that can be freely used, copied, distributed and altered – has also been instrumental in keeping the company alive.
"Teachers and learners who are used to proprietary software, like Windows, have found it very easy to switch from one to the other. The interesting thing is
that after three to six months they start to prefer the open source stuff. They say it breaks down less and they have more technical support,” he says.
Holcroft says NetDay hopes to expand its operations to reach more schools. It is currently working with Uniforum, South Africa - a non-profit organisation that
administers the co.za domain name to urge businesses to support the campaign as part of their social responsibility obligation.
Holcroft believes development would be considerably faster if non-profit organisations worked together.
"One of the real problems with the NGO sector in South Africa is the lack of collaboration between organisations doing fundamentally similar work. What
we need is an umbrella body for all the NGOs dealing in this particular sector, and then we could pool our resources and be more effective,” he said.
By Thrishni Subramoney, Highway Africa News Agency
Cape Town - If Santa Claus ever created a special IT deployment squad, it would probably be a bit like NetDay South Africa.
Armed with open source software and refurbished computers, the non-profit organisation has been sweeping through the country, setting up computer labs
free of charge in schools that are on the leaner end of the digital divide.
The group has set up a free Internet cafe on the outskirts of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference at the Cape Town Convention Centre, in the hopes of drawing more support for their initiative.
General Manager, Edward Holcroft says NetDay South Africa has deployed networks to more than 300 schools since it was created in 1996.
“All the schools have to provide is the room, the desks, electricity and security. We do the rest,” said Holcroft, chatting on the fringes of the ICANN conference.
NetDay is based on the US initiative by the same name - started in the nineties by a group of school teachers eager to introduce their pupils into the Information Communcation Technology (ICT) fold.
The South African version received funding from the International Development Research Centre until 2001. However, when the IDRC scaled back its South African operations, NetDay was forced to operate on business. It now does IT consulting on the side to support its projects and pay support staff.
While the use of refurbished hardware in developing countries has become a contentious issue of late, Holcroft said fixing up used machines has served a
two-fold purpose.
Not only does a poor school receive a free, high quality computer lab, the re-furbishing and installation process is used as a training ground for young people who want IT skills but cannot afford to high tertiary tuition fees.
One of the technicians behind the transformation is Tsholofele Tshenye who joined NetDay as a volunteer four years ago and was hired after six months by NetDay. He says he has enjoyed the experience immensely.
“I've been travelling almost everyday since I joined up, and I can now do anything that has to do with computers. I must've helped do more than a hundred deployments at schools since,” he said.
The fact that NetDay only uses open source software - that can be freely used, copied, distributed and altered – has also been instrumental in keeping the company alive.
"Teachers and learners who are used to proprietary software, like Windows, have found it very easy to switch from one to the other. The interesting thing is
that after three to six months they start to prefer the open source stuff. They say it breaks down less and they have more technical support,” he says.
Holcroft says NetDay hopes to expand its operations to reach more schools. It is currently working with Uniforum, South Africa - a non-profit organisation that
administers the co.za domain name to urge businesses to support the campaign as part of their social responsibility obligation.
Holcroft believes development would be considerably faster if non-profit organisations worked together.
"One of the real problems with the NGO sector in South Africa is the lack of collaboration between organisations doing fundamentally similar work. What
we need is an umbrella body for all the NGOs dealing in this particular sector, and then we could pool our resources and be more effective,” he said.
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