Yetemegn Kebede
20 sep. 2022
Collaboration brings all diaspora together for better outcomes, especially building the northern part of Ethiopia which was destroyed by civil war.
Digital Education Methodology Reform Action Ethiopia (DEMERA) has been established to promote digital education in Ethiopia. Throughout the past year, our NGO has created close cooperation with several European countries.
With that confidential cooperation, DEMERA received substantial devices to boost its digital education initiative with 20 laptops and 150 WIFi access points from De- Connectie in September 2022.
Even though DEMERA has an ongoing project in Digital Education with the Ministry of Education (MOE) where those devices would be used, the priority shifts to what the current situation requires. We at DEMERA acknowledge the northern part of Ethiopia's horrible situation caused by the civil war and would like to contribute our part in the reconstruction of damaged educational assets and infrastructures at Wollo university.
DEMERA transfers the entire devices to Wollo University to be utilized for the e-curriculum developed with the support of EUDiF (European Union Diaspora Facility) on agri-food business and innovation technology projects.
We believe that these donations will play a significant role in the rebuilding process of the university and contribute to broadening campus wide internet access.
Those devices have been sent directly from the Netherlands to Ethiopia Wollo university with the coordination of Wollo University Diaspora Advisory Group (WU-DAG) a non-profit based in Arizona, USA.
"Education as foundation" is our DEMERA vision and we believe it supports the perspective that education is the root of positive socio-economic change and strongly believes in the added value of digital tools to enhance the educational impact. DEMERA focuses on the realisation of enabling and supporting digital education.
We also plan to introduce a system where every student at school has offline access to the digital learning module which can be accessed via tablet and a laptop. For this implementation to happen, DEMERA provides the school a Raspberry Pi device (mini computer). Such mini computers will be utilized as a server where the tablets can connect via Wi-Fi and students can reach the learning contents which can be available from the server.
At the device's handover ceremony, Dr. Awol Seid Wollo University’s Vice President expressed his gratitude to the institutes and individuals involved in securing this donation. He said that "these devices will add significant value and we are very happy to have their contributions as part of the rebuilding process of our University".
As a chairwomen of DEMERA, I would like to express my appreciation to all stakeholders who participate in the entire process. I want to acknowledge my special thanks to De-Connectie, who donated all the devices.