Global Pearls has been selected by Intel Corporation as a “Winner of Wonder” grant recipient to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. Why does Intel want to fund our work?
In Honduras many children cannot attend traditional school due to distance, gang violence, or poverty. IHER is an alternative school allowing children to hear classes over the radio. 35,000 students across Honduras are benefitting from this opportunity, but radio is a difficult medium for learning. If a student is not available at the designated time, distracted by a commotion at home, or struggles to understand a concept, there is no way to back up the lecture to listen again or ask a question.
The Intel grant will fund the development of an app allowing students to download podcasts of their lessons to a cell phone. Children can listen to their lessons at a convenient time, watch video to enhance the lesson, backup and repeat difficult concepts, and test themselves on the concepts with a quiz at the end of each lesson. This will be a much more effective way for them to learn, should increase their scores on national and university entrance exams, and might allow more students across Honduras to enroll given the more flexible nature of the podcasts. 35,000 very needy students across Honduras will benefit from this app.
Thank you, Intel Corporation, for caring about the children of Honduras, and for trusting us to do something wonderful with this grant. We intend to live out the theme of Intel’s celebration which, in the words of Intel’s Founder, Bob Noyce, is, “Don’t be encumbered by history, go off and do something wonderful.”