If you are wondering what happens after people — including kids, young women, incarcerated people, or the visually impaired — take at least one of our digital courses in their life, this is the best story to read to understand their transformative journeys.
The subject of this story is Jocelyn, a young lady from Burundi, who attended our Introduction to Computer Basics (ICB) course in 2013 when she was in 11th grade at the Lycée Technique A. Rossi in her hometown of Ngozi, 80 km north of the capital Gitega.
Burundi is a very small African country and is among the poorest in the world. The schools are not well-equipped and cannot offer much. Elsewhere, the offerings are expensive, or the schools are far away. Jocelyn’s technical lycée is no exception, with very limited resources and no labs: the students have to share a single computer for a 45-minute lesson a week, making it practically impossible to practice and learn properly.
Everything changed when we introduced our ICB course for free, partnering directly with the school’s management. The program provided all the students, including Jocelyn, with sufficient materials, dedicated training, and a well-structured 10-day course. The course covered various computer subjects, including Windows, Excel, PowerPoint, and the Internet. It was sufficient enough to grant Jocelyn and her classmates fundamental digital knowledge and skills. By the end of the course, she received a certificate attesting to her participation and the skills she had acquired. This certification was a significant milestone for her, something to be proud of, especially for a girl from Burundi.
By 2015, with a diploma from her school and our ICB certificate, she had already started working. She leveraged this knowledge and established her own company offering secretarial services. Today, Jocelyn supports her family through her job.
We are happy to support the many Jocelyns in Burundi and everywhere in the world in taking a step forward in their personal development, for a better future and life for them and their family.