Featured Speaker(s)
Nelly Cheboi I grew up in a rural village in Kenya. The situation there was dire. Circumstances forced me to raise my younger sister when I was just nine years old. I wanted to change the narrative of kids growing up in communities like mine. I want to fix poverty, and for good this time.
Through hard work and determination, I landed a full scholarship to Augustana College, in America. Coming to the United States and studying computer science gave me the platform to accelerate my impact. As an undergrad, I invested all of my income from various campus jobs into my community back in Kenya. I built a school, Zawadi, there and later started TechLit Africa.
TechLit Africa is a non-profit American organization that redistributes recycled technology to build computer labs in African schools. We have already built 10 computers in rural Kenya and are currently working on our next 100 computer labs. We already have around 4,000 students and 20 teachers. By next year we will have around 40,000 students and 200 teachers.
Our program is unique because we teach classes that are relevant; we hire local teachers to make sure of it. We train our own teachers to run the computer labs in their own community, who meet every day to improve their classes. We are unlocking a world of opportunities to these kids. They will be inspired to take on a dozen careers: they will have the skills to tap into the global economy straight from the village.
This is my life's work because I know first hand how awful poverty is. We plan to do this for the whole of rural Africa, positioning ourselves to 10x our growth year after year. TechLit is my opportunity to fix poverty, and for good this time.