Spring 2020 update: Covid-19 and Q1
Welcome to the first quarterly newsletter from Jangala. Communication is never more important than during an emergency and the last few weeks have underlined the power of the internet: to enable remote work and study, and connect people to their loved ones and essential services. Our sudden reliance on connectivity during isolation would be familiar to many refugees and people impacted by emergencies around the world.
Jangala aims to play a part in the global response to the pandemic, in the UK and abroad - this newsletter sets out how. We also want to update you on exciting Big Box technology developments and project deployments around the world.
Finally, we are looking for a talented and passionate coder to join the team, more details below. Please do share this newsletter with anyone who might be interested in the position or our work more broadly.
Jangala and Covid-19
During the Covid-19 lockdown many organisations are turning to online service delivery: to provide information, services and automated care to vulnerable individuals, and to enable learning and working from home. However, 17% of UK households – including many of the lowest-income – lack home Wi-Fi. Libraries, cafes and other venues which offered free Wi-Fi have closed, and new home broadband installation are subject to controversy and delays
Jangala is working with organisations in the care sector to rapidly develop, test and deploy a new product - Get Box. Get Box can be sent to a household in the post and within seconds of being plugged into the mains it creates a secure Wi-Fi network by cleverly managing a 4G connection.Get Box will be easy to deploy and manage remotely, allowing households to connect to Wi-FI and providing a platform for assistive technologies.
If you can help us quickly identify impactful trials, secure initial and longer-term funding, or even make introductions, then please get in touch with us at info@janga.la.
We will also continue to deploy Big Boxes and support our existing partners. While many projects are on hold for the safety of all involved, others, such as our healthcare deployments and those supporting camp management, will be needed more than ever.
Jangala in Q1
Big Box on distribution with partner Watizat in Paris, October 2019 here
In 2020, we’re continuing to support refugees and vulnerable communities worldwide, working with organisations including War Child, UNHCR and Camara to improve the provision of education, healthcare, human rights monitoring and economic empowerment for marginalised groups.
At the heart of all this is Big Box. We’ve been working to incorporate the feedback of our partners to bring Big Box ever closer to a certifiable product that can be sold to large scale humanitarian organisations and fuel Jangala’s sustainability long term.
Please find a few select stories below from the past few months. You can see case studies of previous deployments at: https://www.janga.la/deployments.
Deployments
Pascal, the camp coordinator for Amala and the director of URISE in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, unloads the Lenovo devices for use by new students this term
Refugee education - High School Diplomas with Amala (formerly Sky School) in camps in Kenya and Eswatini
Three Big Boxes (on top of one we delivered in 2016) and 30 state of the art laptops supplied by the Lenovo Foundation were delivered by UNHCR to Kakuma Refugee Camp to enable young refugees to learn through Amala’s custom-made online educational platform. Read more about the deployments here and here.
Members of the Community Outreach Team of St Martin’s School will use Big Box at the community centre to deliver courses on micro-entrepreneurship for mothers of Kibagare Slum
Adult education - Economic empowerment for women in Kibagare, Nairobi
In adult education, we are thrilled to support the community outreach project of St Martin’s School.
The system is being used to teach financial literacy and economic empowerment to mothers in Kibagare slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
Healthcare - the Embo Healthcare Clinic, South Africa
Our first ever healthcare deployment is for a community that suffers from very high rates of HIV/AIDS and TB in South Africa. The healthcare clinic in the community of Embo, Durban will use Big Box to help its staff send and receive test results more quickly whilst allowing patients to access medical information and schedule appointments.
On pause due to Covid-19
Some of our projects are on hold due to new rules around social distancing. Here are a couple we’re excited to get back to once this crisis passes:
WarChild - a Big Box is with the Amsterdam office, who will trial it as part of their ‘Can’t Wait to Learn’ programme which uses gaming to deliver education to children affected by conflict.
Camara - a social enterprise installing computer labs in schools across Africa is set to receive two Big Boxes for schools in Ethiopia.
Technical development
Samson tends to the recent Mega build in the Jangala workshop
Jangala builds all Big Boxes in our workshop in Walthamstow, North East London. Our most recent batch represented a milestone for us as it included the next generation of Big Box technology.
New features included surge protection circuitry (so that Big Box can withstand lightning shocks!) and a remote update capability that makes our work more scalable and secure as systems no longer need to be recalled for software changes to be made.
The most recent build saw 16 Big Boxes built over a fortnight - quadruple the number we’ve ever built in one go - and provided many learnings for our manufacturing and testing approaches in the process.
We’re hiring
With an increasing demand for Big Box and new opportunities for Jangala to provide connectivity in the UK we are looking to expand the team and hire a Lead Software Engineer. The job ad is live and you can see it here. Please share it with your networks and if you know a specific someone with technical chops and a desire to harness tech4good then please put us in touch.
Finally, we want to send our warmest wishes at the beginning of such an unprecedented and worrying time. Stay safe, look out for each other, and stay connected!
Best wishes,
Team Jangala