Last week the Infectious Media team headed down to South London to an unassuming warehouse around the corner from Lower Sydenham station. In the warehouse we found a small group of people doing an amazing thing. These were the guys who work for Camara.
Camara is a charity that takes unused computers from businesses, wipes and refurbishes them, uploads them with bespoke educational software, and ships them to schools in African countries where children don’t have access to technology.
But, if that isn’t amazing enough, Camara also has offices in the countries where they ship, so they can train the teachers to use the computers to improve their students' education.
And with over £3m children already helped by the charity, we learned about some of the inspiring stories. Like Haregewoin, who used a computer for the first time, aged 11, in a Camara Education classroom in Addis Ababa. At 18, Haregewoin won a coveted place to study Computer Engineering at Bahir Dar University. She recently presented at a large Camara Education event to over 1,000 and told the audience about her ambition to start up her own tech company and create jobs for her fellow Ethiopians.
By volunteering at Camera this month, we had a great time, got to know each other a bit better, and helped Camara out in their mission in a small way. If this is something your company could get involved in, get in touch with Camara via the below links.
“A computer kickstarts an education. An education kickstarts a career. A career means a prosperous future.”
Camara need your help:
IM team and guys from Camara looking happy with the result of a hard day's work