Tostan pilots SolarSPELL’s first French library in Senegal

We are proud to announce the launch of the ASU SolarSPELL Initiative’s first library collection in French and Pulaar, a language spoken by more than 6 million people across West Africa. This collection, also the first regional collection curated for users in West Africa, is being piloted in Senegal by our partners at Tostan as a tool to complement their Community Empowerment Program (CEP).

Tostan is a global nonprofit that empowers communities through human rights-based education. The CEP, their flagship program, is a “non-formal education program that facilitates community-led development and social progress”. Communities that choose to participate in the program are assigned a trained facilitator, fluent in the local language, who lives in the community for two to three years. Facilitators lead classes for youth and adults and provide training and support for a Community Management Committee (CMC). This locally elected group is responsible for implementing development projects designed by the community.

The SolarSPELL team has been working hand-in-hand with Tostan over the last year to develop a localized library of resources to support their curriculum and the goals of the CMCs. In addition to Tostan’s own training and review materials, the collection features storybooks in Pulaar to complement Tostan’s literacy program and supplementary resources on health, parenting, farming and small business. Working in parallel with SolarSPELL’s French content curation team, interns at Tostan curated more than 1,000 resources in French, Pulaar and Wolof in the span of three months.

On March 9, four members of the SolarSPELL team joined Tostan to co-facilitate a training of trainers with CMC members and facilitators from five participating villages, along with their regional supervisors. Tostan’s SolarSPELL curation interns also attended in order to provide their support and to gain insights that could inform their curation going forward. The five-day training was conducted in French and Pulaar and was one of our most engaging to date. 

While this training of course began with our usual introduction to the SolarSPELL initiative, hardware and library, the additional time allowed us to work in extra opportunities for participants to practice browsing the library and becoming familiar with its content. Having multiple sessions dedicated to searching for content that could support their classes and community vision helped participants quickly build confidence navigating the library. This extra practice also allowed for richer discussions about how to best integrate these digital resources into the CEP curriculum and what kinds of resources should be added to the library in the future.

One new addition to this training was a session practicing how to set up a projector and connect it to the SolarSPELL library; Tostan provided each community with a projector to allow facilitators to more easily show videos and other resources during their classes. After spending the first two days of training getting plenty of hands-on experience using these new tools, the facilitators and supervisors had the opportunity to simulate putting them into practice. In teams of two, they were tasked with leading part of a class from their curriculum while incorporating a resource from the library.

By far the highlight of the training was the last day, when we had the opportunity to visit one of the pilot communities to put these new skills to the test. In a meeting with local leaders, CMC members and other community members, Tostan’s facilitators and local CMC member Mariama introduced the SolarSPELL library, explained how it worked and helped attendees get connected. Before long, nearly everyone in the room was excitedly exploring the library. As the village chief checked out the Foundations for Farming conservation agriculture course, a local midwife asked about adding more resources on childbirth. 

Yussuf Sane, Tostan’s Program Leadership Team Coordinator, highlighted resources from the library, including Tostan’s new session review videos, the Pulaar storybooks and agriculture animations created by Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO). He called upon the CMC to share their feedback to help us expand and improve the collection to better meet their needs:  “As SolarSPELL always says, ‘A library is never finished.’”

Before heading home for the night, we made an impromptu visit to a community garden created by CMC members. Vegetable sales from this garden will help fund the development projects they’ve outlined in their community vision. In addition to providing Tostan facilitators with a powerful new teaching tool, these SolarSPELL libraries will also empower CMC members with the practical information they need to achieve their vision and will support continuous education in their communities well into the future.

The Tostan team is as excited as we are about the future of the partnership, with plans to create more resources in Pulaar to expand the library. We are also working with our partners at SAWBO to translate some of their fabulous animations into Pulaar. 

In the meantime, we look forward to sending Tostan their first library update this month, enabled by our new over-the-air updater. Developed by Jacob Shaeffer, our web developer and system administrator, this software allows us to update libraries faster and more efficiently than ever before. We can’t wait to learn how we can further improve this new library and to see what these communities go on to achieve with this new resource!

The ASU SolarSPELL Initiative empowers offline communities globally by providing localized libraries and building the 21st century skills that people need to make informed decisions, increase their self-reliance and improve their quality of life.

This project was made possible by the generosity of SolarSPELL supporters like you. We invite you to be a part of our mission by visiting our ASU Foundation page or contacting [email protected] to learn more. Let’s change the future — together.