Imagine taking college level classes online, but only having a cell phone or small tablet for viewing classes and completing assignments. Eunice is one of the young women we met in Kenya and this is exactly how she completed courses about hotel management. For those of you who missed all of my posts about Kenya – I was there at the end of August as part of Intel She Will Connect, specifically for the My Digital Journey learning platform. While in Kenya, my team met with several women to get their feedback and spread awareness about the learning platform.

This learning platform is a break-through way to teach digital literacy. It involves a game-like setting and includes quests, missions and challenges. These are all set up with a dialog with characters who guide them through learning concepts of digital citizenship and online safety. With the game-like aspect, the students are engaged in the stories of the program characters and developing their own character to the highest level. This platform will become a place for girls and women to learn how to engage safely online and know how to access any information they need to achieve their dreams.

Eunice was hesitant to the platform at first, but after experiencing it for the afternoon she gave us some great feedback as to how it can empower women and encourage them to join the digital world. Eunice reinforced the sense of community that we had seen every day and suggested using community ambassadors for the learning platform in order to encourage the women to start their digital journey as they would be more likely to join if they had a personal recommendation.

The biggest barrier for getting girls online in her area is the cost for personal internet. The cheapest phone (without internet) is 1000 shillings ($10 USD), to get an internet ready phone, the cheapest option is 2000 shillings ($20 USD) and that doesn’t include the data bundles which must be purchased to get online. Many of the jobs in the area pay 200 shillings a day and people will work 6 days a week. In order to pay for an internet ready phone, that equates to 10 days of pay, which is generally already taken up by rent and food. There are other options for getting online – such as schools, community centers, and cyber cafes which is most likely how these women would be connecting to the internet.

Despite these difficulties, Eunice sees the power of the internet (as well as the need for proper digital literacy skills) and wants the women in her community to gain this knowledge and experience the power. She sees the internet as a way to empower women as they can use it to advertise their goods or connect designers with each other (many of the women at the school we visited were studying to be garment designers or beauticians).

Eunice completed her hotel classes so that she can get a job and save up money to go to university for radio journalism. Many of the young people in her community turn to drugs or alcohol. Her dream is to become a radio journalist so that she can have a program that inspires youth and turns them away from drugs and alcohol. She wants her radio program to feature guest speakers such as counselors who can help the youth through these issues and empower them.

I am glad that we had the chance to meet Eunice and other young women in her community. Make sure to watch the airwaves for Eunice because once she gets there, she is going to make it big!