South Sudan

In partnership with EmpowerKids–South Sudan and Africa Educational Trust, SolarSPELL conducted a pilot with three schools in the Juba, Yambio, and Rumbek districts. The pilot phase was launched in January 2018 with a training that was held in Kigali, Rwanda with teachers and administrators from each pilot school in South Sudan. After the training, the teachers and administrators returned to South Sudan and led trainings for the other teachers and students at their home schools. South Sudan is also the first country where SolarSPELL deployed Library Labs—six tablets, two batteries and a solar panel in a waterproof suitcase—to each pilot school, because of the limited local availability of WiFi-capable devices. Thanks to the efforts of EmpowerKids–South Sudan, the East Africa version of the SolarSPELL Education Library includes the national primary-level textbooks, provided by the South Sudan Ministry of Education.

In 2019, our team opened a SolarSPELL Training Center at the Juba Girls School in South Sudan, establishing a first-of-its-kind regional hub for Juba-area teachers to receive training on the SolarSPELL digital libraries. And in 2020, EmpowerKids–South Sudan was able to use the digital libraries to facilitate distance learning during the pandemic. Over one two-week period of this project, they were able to serve more than 9,400 students, as well as parents and teachers, who downloaded more than 14,000 offline resources from the library.

In April 2023, after three years of development, we officially launched our Health Library at St. Mary’s Health Science Training Institute Juba. Our partners at EmpowerKids–South Sudan led a training for 26 students, tutors and school administrators.