Behind the Digital Attendance App Pilot in Somalia [Story]
The Challenge of understanding school attendance within Somalia has been ongoing for quite some time due to several reasons such as displacement of communities due to recurring disasters and lack of correct information regarding school children. There are some additional complications to this in cases where children may have similar names, or variations such as Muhammed or Muhammad. Although there is some record keeping, it is done sporadically and is inconsistent. In order to understand the causes of dropouts and the dynamics of variables like gender, there needs to be a more efficient and effective way of capturing and storing this data.
The challenge regarding school children attendance was identified by World Vision, a child-focused international humanitarian aid, development, and advocacy organization, through its education interventions. Research was conducted and several potential solutions were proposed. A collaborative approach was formed between World Vision and the Response Innovation Lab (RIL) leading to the identification of the Digital Attendance App (DAA) which showed the best potential to track school attendance. It had been utilized previously by UNICEF in some communities in Kenya. UNICEF had worked directly with a group of students at The University of Nairobi on the DAA platform, and they had since graduated to form their own company known as Sisitech (‘Sisi’ means ‘us’ in Swahili and translates to UsTech). Sisitech works to provide useful and sustainable technology-based solutions that meet local up to global markets.
