As the world has changed, so has education. Since 2018, Nelly Cheboi and her non-profit TechLit Africa have been bringing computer technology into schools in Kenya, helping students join the digital world, and unlock their potential. With its own software programs, curriculum（课程）and teacher training programs, this non-profit hopes to change Africa.
In 2012, Cheboi received a scholarship to College in Illinois that changed her life. She grew up in poverty in rural Kenya, watching her mother struggle to support her family alone. Cheboi had no experience with computers before moving to the US to study. She hand wrote papers and then struggled to type them out on a laptop computer. Somehow she fell in love with computer science and began a career in the field. But she did not lose sight of her origins. "As an undergraduate, I invested all of my income from various campus jobs into my community back in Kenya, "she said on the TechLit Africa website. But soon she wanted to do more for it and that is how TechLit Africa began.
Cheboi recalled how her background helped her understand how important technological knowledge could be for children living in poverty. She built a school with the idea of bringing computer science as part of kids' curriculum growing up. But she found that it was going to be really hard to impact as many people as possible, because it was so hard to fund raise. Then in order to reach more students, she introduced computer training to existing schools. Cheboi physically dragged over 40 recycled computers that had been donated to them by various tech companies to Kenya in suitcases.
Now, since the non-profit has grown, it works with various companies that help them clean the donated computers of data and send them to Africa. TechLit Africa runs its own curriculum with its own software programs in 10 Kenyan schools, and the hope is to increase to 100 throughout Africa by next year. The students love learning about computers, and in turn are gaining skills that will help them make use of their talents into a way out of poverty.
