Kolibri Hardware Grants Program


With a commitment to reaching learners in connectivity-scarce environments, we are bringing our new open source platform, Kolibri, to learners who are otherwise unable to access high quality educational content.

Note: We are not currently accepting new applications. Thank you to everyone who applied.

About the program


Supported by funding from Google.org, the “Kolibri Hardware Grants Program” provides organizations with a grant of approximately $15,000 USD for the purchase of necessary hardware to implement Kolibri in formal schools, educational facilities, and non-formal learning settings, to reach both school-aged and adult learners. Our goal is to learn more about the many ways that Kolibri can be used to bring education to learners around the world who need it most. Grantees have received personalized support to test and pilot Kolibri in their programs, in addition to the hardware, which may also be used for other programming needs.

We have worked closely with our grantees to ensure that they are supported in using Kolibri to address the needs of their community. Users with unique user types and hardware configurations in their context were encouraged to apply.

Kolibri is a tool that many of us educators have long hoped for. It is truly a feat in technology development. Aliim partnered with two local refugee servicing organizations to integrate Kolibri into their education programs. I, myself, am excited about the expansive library of digital learning materials that we can draw from to create contextualized lessons for our students.


Janae Holland, Aliim Founder and Executive Director

Recipients


We are excited to share more about the recipients of the Kolibri Hardware Grants Program, who are bringing Kolibri to their education programs. We selected organizations with diverse education settings and models who share our vision of making access to education more equitable around the world.


North America



Aliim

ALIIM

Aliim is a non-profit organization whose mission is to leverage technology and mentors to provide refugees and marginalized youth access to safe, quality, and relevant education.

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Idaho Department of Corrections

Idaho Department of Correction

The Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) is responsible for managing felony offenders housed in prisons and supervised on probation and parole, across ten prisons and four community reentry centers. Their mission includes providing opportunities for offender change, recognizing that education is critical for a reentry system that enhances public safety and reduces recidivism.

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New Arrivals Institute

New Arrivals Institute

New Arrivals Institute, based in North Carolina, USA, assists refugees and immigrants with self sufficiency and US Citizenship through education. Their vision is a community that welcomes refugees and immigrants and provides them with the tools they need to achieve their goals. In 2017, NAI served over 700 refugee and immigrant adults (18-95) and over 250 children (infancy through high school).

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Rotary Club of Daytona Beach West

Rotary Club of Daytona Beach West

The mission of The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International is to enable Rotarians to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty. The Rotary Club of Daytona Beach West works with the Diocese of Orlando to focus on education and literacy as part of humanitarian service.

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Our role as agents of change is to mobilize the Department of Education as to the use and application of educational technology as part of the curriculum in schools. Instituto Paramitas will implement Kolibri in partnership with the City of Antonio Cardoso, in the state of Bahia, with the aim to provide its children and youth equal opportunities to acquire 21st-century skills and to empower teachers with innovative pedagogy and teaching methodologies.


Claudia Stippe, Founder and CEO - Paramitas Institute

Latin America



Alma Foundation

The Alma Foundation

The Alma Foundation creates and implements play-based and project-based education programs utilizing local indigenous knowledge and language to reinforce critical thinking, creativity, analytical reasoning, and harmonious values to shape socially responsible and environmentally conscious individuals within indigenous communities in Peru and Bolivia.

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Funsepa

Funsepa

The Sergio Paiz Andrade Foundation (FUNSEPA) was created in 2004 to improve educational outcomes in Guatemala through the innovative use of technology and bring about lasting change to the nation’s social and economic development. FUNSEPA provides computer equipment to public primary, middle and high schools and conducts teacher training in Guatemala to effectively incorporate technology into traditional teaching.

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Shoulder to Shoulder

Shoulder to Shoulder

Shoulder to Shoulder works collaboratively to create and operate sustainable and accessible health, nutrition, and education services. They serve in the rural area of Intibucá, Honduras, part of the Central American Dry Corridor.

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TeachUnited

Teach United

TeachUNITED partners with the world's rural schools to ensure that all children receive the education they deserve. With an unshakable devotion to teachers, TeachUNITED provides partners with instructional coaching, innovative off-grid technology, and educational resources to make the shift to personalized learning.

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Fundación Paraguaya

Fundación Paraguaya

Fundación Paraguaya is a leading edge self-sufficient social enterprise founded in Paraguay in 1985 that seeks to develop innovative solutions to poverty and unemployment, and proactively disseminate them throughout the world.

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Haiti Partners

Haiti Partners

Haiti Partners’ mission is to help Haitians change Haiti through education. In an increasingly interconnected world, a loss of human potential becomes a loss for everyone. Over 25 years of in-country experience has shaped the understanding that the most fertile terrain for sustainable change in Haiti is through a quality, community-based education that prepares changemakers.

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Instituto Paramitas

Instituto Paramitas

Instituto Paramitas creates innovative, educational programs aimed at improving learning, developing teacher skills and autonomy, and promoting a ripple effect of social and cultural transformation through the use of technology.

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Powering Potential

Powering Potential

Powering Potential uses technology to enhance education and stimulate the imagination of students in underdeveloped countries while respecting and incorporating values of the local culture — especially cooperation over competition, community over the individual, modesty over pride, and spirituality over materiality.

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With limited access to secondary education in Malaysia for refugees, the PSU Youth Hub model is meant to provide a flexible educational program capable of meeting the multiple needs of refugee youth, including the varying and disrupted educational backgrounds, and competing responsibilities among students. Using Kolibri as the main platform to design and deliver our educational content, we hope to increase the number of young refugees accessing education in the country.


Jessica Chapman, Project Stand Up Director

South/Southeast Asia



Agami

Agami

Agami's mission is to focus on effecting lasting socio-economic change in Bangladesh through education. We provide quality basic education for underprivileged children. Agami and partner schools share the goal of promoting a school environment that is welcoming and academically enriching for the students and teachers. In addition to providing basic support to these schools, Agami firmly believes in bringing the latest innovations in education technology to underprivileged children in Bangladesh.

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i-Saksham

i-Saksham

i-Saksham is an education initiative in India that creates local community leaders in low-income areas by training youth, particularly girls and those with disabilities, in use of digital technology, textbooks, pedagogy and other relevant tools and techniques to deliver quality education. i-Saksham believes that crises in primary education and in life are intertwined, and one can not be resolved without working on the other.

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Prakash Academy

Prakash Academy

Prakash Academy builds leadership skills by leveraging technology to reach children in India who are currently untouched by the benefits of education.

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SAFA

SAFA

SAFA’s vision is socioeconomic empowerment of women and education of the girl child while “retaining the social and cultural identity” of the community.

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Transform Cambodia

Transform Cambodia

Transform Cambodia seeks out and rescues the most vulnerable and neglected street children of Phnom Penh. They rescue and protect them from the many injustices caused by poverty, they restore their dignity and hand them keys to a life of unlimited potential. Transform gives children hope for their future and the future of their country. They believe that by giving the gift of self-belief, they can empower these children to one day grow up and become the change their families and communities desperately need.

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Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI-Tata Trusts)

Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI-Tata Trusts)

Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), established in 2007, is an associate organization of Tata Trusts. CInI-Tata Trust’s focused education program under the Mission 2020 aims at enhancing the learning-levels of students in India along with overall development, as a critical aspect towards enhancing the overall quality of life of tribal communities.

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DTLJ

DTLJ Education Trust

DTLJ Education Trust aims to provide access for the Orang Ulu children and youth in Ulu Baram through education support systems, technology, training, financial assistance and more by focusing on opportunities for education and special needs education, preservation and promotion of culture, and youth development.

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Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation

Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation

Through libraries, Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation (MBAPF) aims to build a strong knowledge based society in Myanmar by transforming community libraries into community centers and to provide resources and capacity building of librarians by bringing global library and information trends such as media literacy to Myanmar.

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Project Stand Up

Project Stand Up

Project Stand Up is a youth-driven platform for improving access to and participation in learning for refugees, particularly girls. Project Stand Up is supported by Payong, which has been in operation since 2009, and has worked continuously to address the many barriers for refugees to access education.

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Teach a Kid Make Individual Life

TAKMIL

Teach a Kid Make Individual Life (TAKMIL)’s mission is to provide basic literacy and numeracy to the millions of out of school children living in slums, remote, and war areas of Pakistan using the latest technology and solar energy.

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The Tekkatho Foundation

The Tekkatho Foundation

The Tekkatho Foundation aims to transform education in Myanmar, right now, by providing digital libraries and other education infrastructure in areas of poor Internet connectivity, and promoting exchanges, teaching placements and research partnerships between educational institutions and international partners.

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ThinkZone

ThinkZone

ThinkZone implements an affordable technology-enabled ‘school-in-a-box’ education solution, aimed at bridging the learning gap amongst children at the bottom of the pyramid in India. By training and empowering local women as educators in their communities, ThinkZone also creates dignified livelihood opportunities and greater gender equality. Using offline technology, ThinkZone is providing ‘level-based’ quality early childhood and primary level education for children across remote villages of India and simultaneously creating jobs for women.

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Tuk Tuk for Children

Tuk Tuk for Children

Tuk Tuk for Children aims to deliver the children of rural Cambodia quality education, sanitation, nutrition, and entertainment. Through their Kolibri implementation they aim to empower teachers and increase educational opportunities for disadvantaged communities in early childhood education. Tuk Tuk operates a mobile book and toy library in the state school system focusing on early primary levels and plans to include Kolibri as a part of the mobile unit to reach rural Cambodian villages.

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Middle East



Civic

Civic

Civic’s core mission is to support a major step-change in the approach of communities and organizations to help accelerate impact and the development of the following skills: early childhood development — literacy and numeracy, life skills, entrepreneurial training curriculum, English language tuition, financial literacy, health and nutrition, parenting, coding, job-readiness training, and community-based urban planning.

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Millions of children are denied their right to education daily in Nigeria. This is our opportunity to address the disparity. The Kolibri Hardware Grant is timely and consequential to our programme as it will enable us to empower teachers in underserved communities, such as Tarkwa Bay island, to develop the knowledge, skills and competencies to bring the world closer to their classrooms. We believe that with great teachers and immense trust in the teaching profession, every student (including those with diverse needs) can receive quality education.


Victoria Ibiwoye, Executive Director

Sub-Saharan Africa



African Math Initiative

African Math Initiative

African Maths Initiative, which will be implementing Kolibri in Kenya, works to support and promote the improvement of mathematics education within the African continent through initiatives at all academic and professional levels.

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Camara Education

Camara Education

Camara aims to transform education by using technology to empower disadvantaged students. Some of Camara’s country organizations, including Camara Ethiopia and Camara Tanzania, will each be implementing Kolibri in their partnering schools.

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ClickMaths

ClickMaths

ClickMaths is a South African organization that leverages technology-based solutions to improve the quality of (particularly maths) education available to underprivileged learners in their home language. To-date, we have translated more than 1000 Khan Academy videos into both isiXhosa and Zulu. They are running a number of programs (directly and in partnership with other organisations) with underprivileged students in online and offline settings and have seen some fantastic results. Now we are broadening the content we use, and making it accessible to thousands more students around the country.

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Code

Code

CODE’s mission is to enable people to learn by developing partnerships that provide resources for learning, promote awareness and understanding, and encourage self-reliance. CODE will be using Kolibri as part of their Reading Liberia 20/20 program in Liberia.

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Elimu

Elimu

Elimu is a charity working to enhance access to education so as to empower Kenyan children, adolescents, and adults, especially those from vulnerable backgrounds, to become more enterprising in how they approach their futures. In 2016, Elimu opened a digital learning centre which uses technology to provide educational resources that are scarce in local schools. They also run a sponsorship project that keeps kids in school and a sewing project that trains girls with income generating skills. Elimu has been operating in Kenya since 2006.

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Kepler

Kepler

Kepler launched in 2013 in partnership with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Through the partnership with SNHU, students earn a US-accredited degree through a unique model of online and in-person learning. Kepler’s dynamic and innovative model blends technology, competency-based education and participatory classes. They produce graduates with relevant skills and the right attitude to meet the needs of a global and knowledge-based economy. By collaborating with local employers, they build internship opportunities and classroom-to-career pipelines.

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Mayein

Mayein

Based in Nigeria, MAYEIN’s mission is to support youths, particularly those who are excluded and underserved, to build 21st century competencies, thrive and participate in the economic and civic life of their communities and the Nation. To achieve this, they connect youths with resources for improving literacy, basic ICT and entrepreneurial skills as well as organize practical civic education programs for school children and dialogues around girl child education amongst stakeholder and “gatekeepers” in community settings.

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Partners for International Development

Partners for International Development

Partners for International Development (PfID) is a registered Canadian charity that funds and operates poverty alleviation projects in Kenya, Peru, and Tanzania, with a focus on education and health. 1Room is a pilot-stage education initiative to design an ultra low-cost, competency-based high school program that can serve the world’s most marginalized learners. 1Room aims to deliver a complete curriculum with as little as a single classroom and as few as 15 learners, for less than 15% of per capita national income per student.

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Sportstec

Sportstec

Operating in South Africa, Sportstec provides technical support, consultation and implementation to all components of sport system delivery for sustainable CSI interventions. They believe in the potential of sport, that when properly delivered, contributes to personal and social development.

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Sportstec

Servedirect

ServeDirect works with local partners in Uganda for 'the prevention or relief of poverty and or hardship by providing or assisting in the provision of education, training and healthcare projects and all the necessary support designed to enable the individuals to generate a sustainable income, be self-sufficient and the opportunity to reach their potential.'

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Turing Trust

Turing Trust

The Turing Trust, founded by Alan Turing’s closest family, believes that bridging the digital divide in Africa would be a truly fitting way to honour his remarkable legacy. The Turing Trust believes in a world of equal opportunity, with technology-enabled education for all. They provide reused IT equipment, loaded with educational resources, and training to schools in sub-Saharan Africa while also delivering skills development in the UK whilst reducing waste and contributing to an environmentally-friendly society.

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Vodafone Ghana Foundation

Vodafone Ghana Foundation

Vodafone Ghana Foundation, the charity arm of Vodafone Ghana was launched in 2009 to support sustainable initiatives that drive social change, improve people’s lives and solve pressing social needs. The Vodafone Ghana Foundation aims to utilize high impact technological programmes to support vulnerable groups in Ghana whilst transforming lives and contributing to the socio-economic agenda. The specific initiative related to this grant is Instant Schools for Africa. Working in partnership with Learning Equality, free access to online digital educational content is being provided.

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Cause Canada

Cause Canada

CAUSE Canada strives to be a catalyst for global justice by providing sustainable integrated community development in rural West Africa and Central America through authentic collaborative long-term relationships. CAUSE Canada focuses on supporting beneficiaries in their struggle for more accessible and high-quality healthcare and education services by providing them with training in basic literacy, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, and personal and social empowerment. It works with the most marginalized populations, including Indigenous people, women and people with disabilities.

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Common Ground for Africa

Common Ground for Africa

Common Ground for Africa’s mission is to help mitigate poverty, the single largest threat to human well-being and social stability in Kenya. Poverty breeds hunger, disease, illiteracy and environmental degradation. It also sharpens civil conflicts.

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EDUCOA

EDUCOA

EDUCOA aims to deliver ICT-based education programs to cultivate lifelong learning skills in sub-Saharan African youth so that they succeed in the global market. EDUCOA has piloted a low-cost student centric model into Ghanaian primary schools called the “Innovation for Life Skills Framework,” which inculcates 4 lifelong learning competencies, and uses digital portfolios (DPs) as the medium for students to leverage learning and attainment of those skills. Their comprehensive approach tackles three critical school-based barriers to quality education in Africa: (1) inadequate curriculum, (2) inadequate teacher training, and (3) poor infrastructure.

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Ghana Make a Difference

Ghana Make a Difference

Ghana Make a Difference shelters children who have been abandoned and who have been rescued from forced child labor. They provide these vulnerable children with a place they can call home as they work to reintegrate them with their biological family or to place them in a new family. They preserve families by providing a path to self reliance through education, adult literacy, vocational training, social assistance, healthy living, and access to medical care.

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The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy works as a model and catalyst for the conservation of wildlife and its habitat. It does this through the protection and management of species, the initiation and support of community conservation and development programs, and the education of neighboring areas in the value of wildlife.

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One African Child Foundation for Creative Learning

One African Child Foundation for Creative Learning

One African Child’s mission is to create a society that fosters creativity, education and innovation among young Africans. It is a youth-led organization committed to redefining access to quality education for disadvantaged children in Nigeria through activity-based workshops, advocacy and empowerment programs centered on education for sustainable development and global citizenship.

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Shif IT

Shift IT

Shift IT is a not-for-profit ICT education provider that is growing ICT access in Malawi. By offering rural and low-income communities sustainable, affordable data solutions and tech education, they are able to be included in the digital landscape. Offline and open source learning resources and support is at the core of resource delivery for the organizations they work with.

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School in a Box

The Social Project

The Social Project develops and provides collaborative, scalable educational platforms to connect, equip and empower Southern Africans, with the aim of eradicating the extreme income inequality, so they can become employable, contributing citizens.

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Techno-Science

Techno-Science

Techno-Science is a technology-for-development program partner in Nigeria and other countries in West Africa. They provide program support to international development partners, providing technology program design, development, field deployment and adoptions in education, health and other critical public sectors. They have branches in other parts of the world that help in direct sourcing from manufacturers of technological tools used in field deployment of technological programs.

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Zurielles Academy

Zurielles Academy

Zurielles Academy is the first female-focused, 16-week coding school boot camp for underprivileged young women in Cote d’Ivoire, a low-income country in West Africa. We train them as junior developers and connect them with local employers through paid internships with possibilities of gaining full-time employment, therefore breaking the cycle of poverty.

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