In 2017, we took a chance on a young man, Muluh Godson, who showed incredible potential. With a $3,500 grant, we funded his idea to improve education in Cameroon: an app called SchoolFAQs. That platform is now the technology infrastructure behind the Cameroonian Ministry of Education’s national distance learning system – a system created to reach students who cannot afford school fees or who cannot attend school because of the Anglophone Crisis. Currently, SchoolFAQs handles 14.97 million requests per month and is still growing. As Godson says, SchoolFAQs exists because Global Pearls took a chance on him; without that support, SchoolFAQs may never have made it past the prototype.
So, when Godson approached us this year with another innovative idea, we were eager to listen. Most secondary schools in Cameroon have no functioning science laboratory, and an estimated 95% of students have no textbook of their own. For most students, science isn’t even something they get to imagine from a diagram. That gap falls hardest on the students with the least access: rural schools, under-resourced public schools, and regions without stable electricity or internet. Godson’s brainchild is NDAHI Labs (named after his father who was killed by Amba rebels for his work promoting education). The goal of NDAHI Labs is to create science simulations in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Computer Science and is built around the constraints students have in accessing technology.
We funded the pilot in which a 15-person team produced 435 interactive, visual science simulations in both English and French, and teachers across Cameroon were trained in their use. This is laying a foundation for a higher-quality, more equitable science education across Cameroon. If the pilot is successful in impacting learning, the Education Ministry of Cameroon has agreed to fund its expansion. So far, teachers are amazed and love the simulations. In fact, the theme of the new academic year in Cameroon has become “Learning with Simulations”. SchoolFAQs and NDAHI Labs are a perfect example of why Global Pearls is entrepreneurial in nature – taking strategic risks can lead to some really amazing achievements!
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