Connectivity, devices and job coaching in rural Philippines
The programme where the software was never the hard part. The hard part was getting a working machine and a usable signal into a rural community, then teaching people what to do with them.
Sector: Access
- Focus
- Rural access
- Includes
- Devices + connectivity
- Plus
- Job coaching
The challenge
Digital inclusion programmes tend to arrive as an app. In the rural Philippine communities we work with, the barrier came earlier than that: no device in the household, no reliable connection, and no one nearby who could show you how any of it worked.
Handing out laptops without the other two produces a photograph and very little else.
What we built
- Sourced, refurbished and deployed devices into households and community centres
- Established connectivity in locations the commercial telcos had deprioritised
- Ran in-person digital literacy and job-readiness coaching, repeatedly, not once
- Kept supporting the hardware afterwards, because donated devices break like any other devices
Where it landed
Households moved from no access to usable access, with someone to ask when it broke.
Job coaching turned access into applications rather than browsing.
The programme is ongoing. This is the arm of DigiHwy Certainty that works in the physical world.
You cannot digitalise a household that does not have a device.
Built with
- Hardware
- Connectivity
- Training
- Philippines