Direct Donations For Education and Development

Building a world where every person can realise their full potential.

DirectEd
“There is not a meeting that I go to today with any CEOs or senior executives of any organisation who's not looking for more software developers, more digital skills. That's the currency in every sector of the economy in every economy in the world."
- Satya Nadella, CEO and chairman of Microsoft
Students

Problem

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A shortage of software engineers, globally and within Africa

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Even the brightest young Africans lack the resources and quality training to seize this opportunity

Solution

Introductory Course

This is a 1-week long coding course introducing students to coding using Python. By adapting Harvard’s famous CS50 Introduction to Computer Science to fit a mobile-only environment, we make this accessible to all students, regardless of socio-economic background.

Coding Bootcamp

Top students from the Introductory Course proceed to the Coding Bootcamp. This is an extremely demanding 12-week-long full-time coding bootcamp covering full-stack web development in the MERN framework and a wide range of soft skills through special expert workshops.

Internship and Specialisation

Coding Bootcamp graduates continue their training through a 6-month internship with a partner tech firm. They work in teams of four with support from a working professional while specialising in a skill our research has revealed to have the highest employability potential.

Learner's journey

Onboarding
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We partner with top-performing high schools in Kenya and Ethiopia, and onboard to infrastructure solutions that allow them to issue Verifiable Credentials.

Intro Course
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We offer a 1-week long mobile-phone-based Introductory Course in Python based on open-source material from Harvard University.

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Access Scholarships
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Top performers of the Introductory Course are given Scholarships to attend the 12-week DirectEd Bootcamp.

Coding Bootcamp
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For each partner school, we set up one Access scholarship pool in order to raise funds to support students from low-income families through the bootcamp.

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Study-Internship
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Graduates of the DirectEd Bootcamp join the Graduate Programme; either joining our study-internship program, or an external elite coding bootcamp.

Recontribution!
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As successful scholars find employment, the alumni group of the partner high school will ask them to contribute to the next cohort of students.

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Why us?

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Economic Sustainability

The vast majority of charities fail to be economically self-sustaining, relying on continuous donations and grants. Our Access Scholarship pools are tied to specific high schools. This way, successful alumni are more likely to support the next generation of students as they would have a shared background.

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Transparency & Accountability

Legacy charity donors cannot independently verify where their funds went or how they were used. By using privacy-preserving decentralised identifiers and facilitating scholarships using blockchain smart contracts that release funds conditional on reaching milestones, we achieve transparency by design and accountability.

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Cost-Effective Impact

Few charities successfully deliver cost-effectiveness transformative impact. We strive to achieve maximum impact per donated dollar by targeting a highly scalable cause area with extremely high impact potential. We also maintain an ethos of data-driven decision making and cost-effectiveness throughout our operations.

Access scholarships expenditure

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Learn more about the handling of donated funds here

What is the impact?

$1 donated → $66 estimated direct economic value over their lifetime

This makes us one of the most effective development projects in the world

Partners

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