Fellow Wikimedians...
After a few days of calls and trying to explain a lot on phone, today I did my first visit which is the first day in a 2 day previsit. I managed to visit 5 schools today and there might be more work than we think. The need goes beyond just resources into the computer lab... there is no computer lab, even in the schools where they teach computers.
*Shimo la Tewa High School:* Nice reception of the idea, they are ready for us next week and they have 20 computers in their lab that are functional.
*Sheikh Khalifah* Big computer lab, lots and lots of monitors (I think almost 40) and only 5 functional computers, which the computer teacher said he could not guarantee that if we come next week they will be ok as they often break down and there is no proper maintenance undertaken.
*Mombasa Light Academy* I think the best computer lab I have seen around, 260 computers and a very high class of students. All computers have internet access and students have access to the labs and are actually allowed to bring their own computers and use the internet which has some sites like facebook filtered. Feedback for our project: They are way beyond us... so, we will not be helping anyone with an offline version - even after I explained that we had a version that was specifically filtered for educational purposes.
*Maweni Secondary School, Nyali* Government school with only 2 computers for the computer lab, they asked if we could source computers to equip their lab. If not, it doesnt make sense to them.
*Oshwal Academy - Senior School* Nice computer labs, nice reception too, I have an appointment with their head of IT tomorrow to install on one of their machines so that they can review and decide if they actually need it, but they are positive and it will most likely be one of the institutions we cover. Computer lab has 76 nice computers.
On a general observation, we might need to get a little more ambitious with our project by taking the challenge of looking for organizations willing to support creating and improving of computer labs in our schools, am sure they are there and with resources and time, we can surely get them and achieve a very important goal. Meanwhile, tomorrow I have other 6 schools to visit in the Mombasa city centre and I will have my final report on this tomorrow.