Vodafone's 'school in a box' offers education hope for refugees

The instant classroom consists of a laptop and 25 tablets pre-loaded with educational software as well as a projector, speaker and modem with 3G capability.

Vodafone New Zealand is helping to boost education in refugee areas with the development of its instant classroom - a digital "school in a box".

The instant classroom consists of a laptop and 25 tablets pre-loaded with educational software as well as a projector, speaker and modem with 3G capability.

The classroom has been specifically designed for areas where electricity and internet connectivity are unreliable or non-existent and Vodafone New Zealand Foundation chairman Antony Welton said the classroom would enable children in refugee settlements or poorer areas to continue their education.

"The Vodafone Foundation Instant Classroom is robust, simple and powerful," Welton said. "It puts the best technology that educators have to offer into the hands of children and young people living in the toughest of environments."

Vodafone initially distributed tablets to refugee settlements in Kenya, but decided to take the programme a step further and allow people to learn in areas where power and broadband were not available.

The instant classroom was designed to be portable and could be charged off-site, and stay charged for the full school day.

According to Vodafone, feedback had been extremely positive, with teachers at the Dadaab schools in Kenya saying lessons had been more popular and pupil attendance had risen by 15 per cent. The teachers said the cost of digital books was less than physical books and they were more portable.

Welton said mobile technology was empowering and could address some of the world's most pressing humanitarian challenges.

"There are 25 million child refugees worldwide who have spent an average of 17 years displaced, with limited access to education," he said.

"Instant Classroom has come out of real experiences by our people deploying Vodafone's Instant Network in disaster situations, seeing the need, and realising we can help."

The Vodafone foundation in partnership with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) will roll out the classroom to 12 schools in refugee settlements in Kenya, Tanzania and in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year, providing up to 15,000 children and young adults aged from 7 to 20 with advanced teaching aids that are now available only in a minority of schools in developed nations.

Vodafone said the programme would be extended with the aim to reach more than 40,000 children and young people in the next two years.

UNHCR Innovation lead Olivier Delarue said he was looking forward to working with Vodafone.

"In the face of increasingly complex humanitarian crises, UNHCR is tasked with finding new, creative ways to meet the developmental and educational needs of young refugees and stateless people worldwide," he said. "We welcome the opportunity to work with the Vodafone Foundation to find innovations that work in the refugee context."

Instant Classroom

• Digital "school in a box" created to bring tablet-based teaching to refugee camps.

• Vodafone Foundation Instant Classroom takes 20 minutes to set up and can be used in classrooms without electricity.

• To be deployed in partnership with the UNHCR to 12 schools in Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo over next 12 months.