Senegal govt to scale-up OneWorld's eLearning programme

Minister Serigne Mbaye Thiam receives materials for ClickInfoAdo from OneWorld Executive Director, Mike Yates.

Image by OneWorld

The path-breaking educational initiative, known as "ClickInfoAdo," has already reached tens of thousands of young people in schools and youth centres since it launched in the West African country in 2010.

"Working hand in hand with the Senegalese Ministry and civil society, we have shown that new technologies can break down barriers, get young people excited and engaged about really important subjects, and help students get the answers they need to take more control over their lives," said OneWorld's Executive Director Michael Yates, speaking after the ceremony in the Senegalese capital. "The ClickInfoAdo project has met its targets during this pilot stage, and we're very excited to watch it grow and expand as our local partners take even more ownership in the coming years."

Yates was speaking on behalf of OneWorld and its founding partners and developers of the initiative, Butterfly Works, saying they were very pleased to be bringing the 2-year pilot project to a successful close, handing over responsibility for the long-term sustainability of the initiative to the Senegalese Ministry of Education and OneWorld's local partners, led by the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE), the Group for Population Studies and Education (GEEP), Intermondes-Senegal, and the Network to Support Development Initiatives (RAID).

The Senegalese government is now planning to expand the initiative throughout the country's school system. "It's important that the educational community appropriate and learn from this approach, with a view to mainstreaming it within the middle and secondary schools," said Minister of Education Serigne Mbaye Thiam. "I will ensure that the relevant structures within the Ministry integrate this digital tool into the general, vocational, and professional curriculums." 

ClickInfoAdo is a computer-based sexual and reproductive health curriculum that introduces sensitive topics to young people in a format they are comfortable with. It helps students and teachers overcome taboos about sexuality in Senegalese society by using virtual peer educators -- in the form of info-cartoons -- and participatory learning methods to broach difficult topics.

"We see that, when students use the computer interface, they quickly open up and are able to dive into topics that were previously off limits to them," said Uju Ofomata-Aderemi, OneWorld's Mobile4Good Programme Director, who was among the team that developed the first incarnation of the eLearning platform in Nigeria in 2006. 

The ClickInfoAdo eLearning platform was built by OneWorld's partners Butterfly Works and the African Network for Education and Health (RAES). The info-cartoons were written by young people in and around Dakar -- under the tutelage of Butterfly Works and RAES -- with the same young people voicing the main characters on the platform, in both French and Wolof. The project benefitted from multi-year financial support from Oxfam Novib. 

ClickInfoAdo-Senegal is the second eLearning initiative OneWorld has implemented in West Africa with local partners and Butterfly Works. The first, which launched the "Learning about Living" family of projects, has been used by over 100,000 Nigerian young people since 2007, and a sister "ClickInfoAdo" initiative is launching this year in Mali as well. Discussions are underway to launch a similar initiative in Cambodia later in 2013.

The eLearning programme is supported by OneWorld's mobile Question-and-Answer service, known as "BipInfoAdo," which enables Senegalese youth to ask any question free of charge by SMS, email, or through the project Web site and receive accurate, confidential and non-judgemental information and advice, from trained counselors. 

"When we arrived in Nigeria, and then several years later in Senegal, we immediately saw that young people had lots of questions about sexual and reproductive health, but very few people they could talk to about those issues," said Ofomata-Aderemi. "But they all had a mobile phone -- or at least access to one. And the conversations they had on those phones were private, which meant they could talk about subjects they wouldn't go near in public."

OneWorld discovered similar dynamics in Mali, Morocco, and Egypt, where similar initiatives have since launched, taking advantage of the rapid proliferation of mobile phones in each of those countries in recent years.

In Senegal, the "ClickInfoAdo" eLearning programme is currently being taught in over 50 schools by more than 600 trained teachers, and more than 215,000 questions have been sent to the mobile service -- 70% from young girls and women. The most common questions concern HIV/AIDS, the menstrual cycle, sexuality and other personal issues. Counsellors from the Senegalese non-profit ENDA respond to questions like "how can I avoid getting pregnant?"; "can you get AIDS from a toothbrush?"; and "what can I do about menstrual cramps?" 

The success and handover of the Senegal project comes one year after the Nigerian platform and project were handed over to that country's Ministry of Education and local civil society partners. It continues to run strong, with the platform having now answered nearly half a million questions from young people. The Nigerian project is now being carried forward by local civil society partners and the Ministry of Education, with the support of Oxfam Novib and UNAIDS.

"Our goal is to empower local organisations with technology platforms they need to grow their reach and impact, and ultimately ensure that more people are empowered with the information they need to take control of their lives," said Ofomata-Aderemi. "Once we've built the capacity of our local partners and helped to demonstrate the potential of these technologies, we step back and let our local partners take the lead -- though of course we're still there in the background to support them over the longer term."

"We're very pleased that our flagship 'Learning about Living' projects in Senegal and Nigeria are continuing to expand and grow, and we look forward to watching them progress over the coming years."