USACF’s Bridge Project is “bridging” the well-known “digital divide” – creating digital libraries that bring low-cost, reliable access to a wealth of materials including hundreds of books, reading lessons, textbooks, teacher resources, instructional videos, encyclopedias, coding courses, hundreds of health and development articles, math courses, high school science, past exams, and more. We are reaching thousands of students and teachers who have limited access to educational resources.
At the heart of each of our digital libraries is USACF’s “Bridge Pi” – a portable, low-cost, high quality, “Raspberry Pi” computer that creates a WiFi hotspot giving 30+ devices unlimited, free access to a remarkable collection of materials saved on the Bridge Pi. Any WiFi-enabled device (including tablets, PCs, and phones) can connect in seconds.
Initiatives:
The Bridge Project has exciting initiatives underway in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and other countries in Africa. Our most recent initiative is BP-Nigeria, where working with our partners from Christ Apostolic Church in Brooklyn we have brought digital librqaries to 12 high schools across Nigeria.
Educators from 12 high schools learning to use the Bridge Pi at a workshop in Nigeria
In Sierra Leone the Bridge Project has enabled the computers at our new We Yone Learning Centre to come to life (internet access in the area is slow, expensive, and unreliable). Here young teachers are being trained to access the digital libarary.
We are extremely excited by the recent success our new week-long educational technology training sessions. During a 5 week school break we reached out to 5 area schools and set up 5 week-long programs where 20 kids and teachers would come for a week. The program is such a big hit! Significantly, for virtually all 150+ participants this was their first time even touching a computer. Demand and interest are high and we are looking forward to building on this successful pilot next year.
For more information, please watch a short video to learn and get inspired: