‘Build with, not for’- A recap of our Digital Ambassador Program partners’ progress meetings

“For me, the program is inclusive since it has a huge consideration of young women who are left behind on digitalization”. This was a reflection of Hon. Neema Mulangira, Member of Parliament, Tanzania who attended the Digital Ambassador Program (DAP) general partners meeting organised by Pollicy in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania on April 22nd, 2022.

Hon. Neema was among the participants that took part in our general partners meetings for the DAP program which happened in both Uganda and Tanzania, and were attended by university students (the main target of the program), and Civil Society Organisation partners working in the tech, digital literacy and science learning space. Other partners in attendance were Digital Woman Uganda, ICT Teachers Association of Uganda, Fundi Bots, HER Internet in Uganda as well as LaunchPad Tanzania, Success Hands Tanzania Initiative, Omuka Hub as well as Tanzania Data Lab (dlab).

Speaking at the general partners meeting in Uganda, Phillip Ayazika the Programs Manager at Pollicy mentioned that the key objective of these meetings, was to introduce the program as it progresses from the partner onboarding stage onto its next phases of implementation, as well as discuss the different areas of collaboration for each of the partners on the Program.

The program seeks to equip young people, in institutions of higher learning, with digital safety skills to take advantage of existing and future digital opportunities through active training, mentorship, convenings, and networking. The Digital Ambassadors will not only build their digital resiliency but will also serve as resource persons within their communities.

“One of the key approaches we are using for the DAP Program, is the human centred design approach, which is a creative way of addressing challenges, for instance, digital literacy which is the key issue this program seeks to address. Here, the end-user is at the centre of developing ideas to address the issue in conjunction with all the different relevant partners within the issue’s ecosystem.” Navina Mutabazi, the Program Coordinator, Tanzania, mentioned.

The key challenges that this program seeks to address include the low numbers of girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM), technophobia, lack of digital tools, high internet costs, and language barrier. This language barrier challenge was highlighted during the meeting as young people revealed most of the existing platforms were predominantly in English, a language they were not comfortable with. On the other hand, many women revealed that they didn’t have the time to participate in such programs since they were always preoccupied with domestic chores, especially in rural areas.

A key session carried out at the meetings was community mapping and this was aimed at understanding the young people’s communities, the different partners worked with, challenges these partners had faced while working with young people on digital technologies, as well as identifying what the Program can do differently for a more effective intervention around digital literacy in young people among others.

Paramount were the many ideas on what the Digital Ambassador program should do differently to realise the utmost impact it can achieve in bridging the digital literacy gap among young people starting with those in higher learning institutions.

“After listening to the overview of the program and clearly understanding it, I would tell you here in the room that the numbers we have set here are small, more young people are going to be interested in the program”. Zania Abdallah, student at Mwalimu Nyerere University.

“From the community mapping exercise, we learnt that there have been numerous grassroots efforts to include young people done by partners through increasing young people’s digital skills and a number of topics have been covered such as online safety, digital marketing, data science, and machine learning.” Navina further mentioned.

The meetings ended with a session pretesting the branding materials with all the partners in the room. This included the brand identity where elements such as draft logos as well as the mock ups of the program materials such as banners, shirts, and others were tested.. All this was meant to guide the development of a brand identity that resonates with young people who are the core target of this program.