Real-life "slumdogs"

The blockbuster film "Slumdog Millionaire" is truly shocking in the reality it portrays for many of India's slum children.  It's well worth trying to watch it this Summer if you haven't yet.

We can't make them millionaires, but we realised we could develop a child/student sponsorship system.  This is to fund training so they can earn a decent crust and support their families.

Started Burmese Refugee Community Learning Centre

We are very excited to announce that Switched On is starting to fund English teaching for a very poor Burmese refugee community that has fled horrible persecution because they have Christian faith. Currently they earn a meagre pittance as they do not speak a local language or English. In time we hope to provide some computers to further develop their employment opportunities.

Switched On Developer Weekend

We held a Developer Weekend in Cambridge in April, where software & teaching approaches were developed by a team of 16 able volunteers in preparation for our return to the UK in the Autumn.

The output is still being worked on and can be found at the developer website:

http://code.google.com/p/so-class2/

Value of Blended Learning Courses in English Demonstrated

The potential of our approach for teaching English and computers using blended learning was clearly validated by a field-exercise in a poor community in north-east India. The course was oversubscribed by three times. We will be refining the approach over the Summer.

New Year News

We would like to wish you a happy and prosperous New Year!

With the freshness of a new start, we're going to India very shortly to establish computer training centres for the underprivileged. We will be faced with helping tackle the 70% youth unemployment in villages of north-east India.

The centres themselves will mainly be funded by the Indian Government, supplemented by income from the discounted course fees. We were invited to provide consultancy based on our experience of running a Switched On centre in a poor suburb.

This is an exciting and ground-breaking venture. We intend to employ the latest techniques of blended learning, that is, a mix of computer- and facilitator-led training. This approach will improve course quality whilst reducing costs longer term and driving towards financial sustainability for the project.

The first phase, from January to March is to build the initial team and run a short English course to test the water. If all goes well, we will turn the English course into a blended-learning module.

With kind regards and special thanks to our supporters!

Richard