My Gratitude Note

To borrow the great words of Margaret Mead, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has'. As we are approaching our ten years anniversary, I cannot help but remember those early days of creating content, developing digital platforms, pivoting and iterating, understanding data, building relationships and engaging our users. What was merely an idea for a platform, has become a movement for educational technologies in Tanzania.

What has stood the test of time, despite differing eventualities, has been our resolve, resilience and commitment to the mission.

You and us. A small group of thoughtful committed individuals.

Speaking of individuals, Patience and Rajabu, have led our technical personnel to build what I would say the most robust educational content repository and an Application Programming Interface (API) system that supports multiple curriculums, diverse digital platforms and future functionalities we have not even thought of yet. True to its capacity, when we embarked on our Primary educational content and digital platform, the system was versatile enough to accommodate the new Primary school curriculum, an educational gaming mobile application and an SMS platform without disrupting the rest. Over time, we have built strong systems in the back end as much as offering great products on the front end, be it web, mobile apps or SMS.

Through human centric design approaches, we ensure our digital learning platforms and solutions are always relevant to the user and contextual to the dynamic education sector ecosystem. We think of ourselves as an education organization that leverages technology to achieve an impact in teaching and learning goals.

One day an impact walked right through the door of Shule Direct.

His name was Godbright Uiso. In 2015 when we were about to launch our SMS platform, we engaged avid Shule Direct users as volunteers for the launch event. One of the stellar users and selected volunteer was Godbright from Azania Secondary School.

When we met Godbright again few years later, he did not come to collect cookies for his consistent use of Shule Direct seven years earlier but rather as a successfully recruited employee.

He was going to be responsible to develop a digital learning platform and create resourceful learning experiences for someone like his younger self.

He had come full circle. From a user, to not only a content creator, but a full fledged technical developer.

He had accessed learning resources for his classes but something else was awakened in him.

A passion for technology.

I have seen impact in many shapes and forms but Godbright's story will always be one among my favorites.

Azania Secondary School where he studied is a public Secondary School managed under the Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Government under the President's Office (PORALG) and one of the schools using the national School Information System. The Ministry has been working hard to improve schools' management systems and Information Communication Technologies infrastructure and operations. This led to the development of the School information System which is available online for all schools in Tanzania with offline and support plans underway to support management of academics, staff, operations and now, for the first time in Tanzania e-learning content for teaching and learning.

In 2022, we officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the PORALG to integrate our e- learning platform with the national School Information System to ensure schools especially teachers have access to Shule Direct's teaching and learning resources.

Our core definitions of sustainability include driving adoption through improved capacities to address barriers, influencing policies, strategies and frameworks that support deployment, use and adoption of educational technologies and scaling through working with Government systems and stakeholders.

A common thread throughout has been our formidable partners. A small group of thoughtful committed individuals.

To the partners who believed in the mission, even when it seemed far fetched.

To the partners who supported our imperfect proposals and took a leap of faith.

To the partners who criticised, refined and moulded us, with constant feedback.

To the policymakers who saw the future ahead of its time.

To the communities we worked with, worked in, worked for.

Also, to the 'we regret to inform you', 'we cannot support you at this time', partners, for taking us back to the drawing board.

A journey like no other, because of you.

Together, with 3.7 Million students, 58,664 teachers and 3992 schools, we say thank YOU!

Yours in service,

Faraja

Karibu for the rest of the 2022 Annual Report