10 Sep Adesua Online Provides Offline Services To Twafoman Senior High School.
On Saturday 29th August 2020, Ebenezer Tenkorang, CEO of Adesua Online, made an offline version of the portal’s services available to Twafoman Senior High School in Berekuso. He follows in the steps of other Ashesi Venture Incubator (AVI) fellows, whose businesses have contributed to the AVI COVID-19 Relief Impact Project over the past few weeks.
Adesua Online is a social enterprise whose mission is to make education accessible and affordable in Africa through the use of technology. Adesua Online is one of the various businesses under the guidance of the AVI. Seeing an opportunity to lessen the effect of the pandemic on schools, the enterprise took the initiative to provide an offline alternative of its online services to Twafoman Senior High. Adesua Online donated a computer, a WLAN device and other electronic equipment that would make it possible for students in Twafoman Senior High School and other students in the Berekuso community to access free offline education.
Speaking with the CEO, Ebenezer Tenkorang, on the motive behind the initiative, he stated: “We are all aware of the changes the pandemic has brought to the lives of everyone. One of the key sectors of our economy that has been affected by this pandemic is the education sector. As a business in the sector, we saw a good opportunity to help students by providing an offline version of our service. Our hope is that this initiative will help the students learn on their own.”
The Adesua Online team also provided a demonstration on how the offline service works. Several students had the opportunity to connect to the service and experience learning offline. The NEXTi2i team interviewed some of the students for their views on the initiative. Jonathan Agyeman was one of such students, and this was what he had to say: “This offering is very good. Most of us don’t have the money to always buy data to learn online. With this here, we have the opportunity to learn at any time, at no cost. Also, you can always go back to crosscheck and clarify what you have learnt using this platform.”
The NEXTi2i team also interviewed the headmistress and teachers of the school. They lamented the disruptions that have occurred in their school as a result of the pandemic. The headmistress explained that most of the students were now scattered, with some even moving out of town making it very difficult to design something that could help the students learn. “From the little information we’ve gathered, very few of our students are making any effort to study at home,” she bemoaned. “This is why we really commend you on this initiative. It will complement our efforts and at least provide another platform for our students to learn. We are so grateful, but like Oliver Twist, we will be even more grateful if you could get some more routers for us that will be used by the basic schools and the community at large.”
The donation exercise was done at the school’s premises, and hosted about 50 Twafoman students, the headmistress, 3 teachers and some community members. The NEXTi2i team also shared nose masks to participants at the donation exercise.