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2001 Education Award Laureate
Freeplay Foundation
South Africa
www.freeplayfoundation.org
Laureate Video
Freeplay Foundation: Sharing Lifelines to Information
The Freeplay Foundation's wind-up and solar-powered radios provide people in need with sustainable access to education to lift them out of poverty, and information to help save their lives.
In developing countries, where people are often isolated by geography, illiteracy, conflict, and poverty, radio is one of the primary means of communication, but batteries to power radios are expensive, and most areas are not electrified. To address this problem, The Freeplay Foundation distributes wind-up and solar-powered radios to those in need. The Tech Museum Awards celebrated The Freeplay Foundation with the 2001 Education Award for this innovative use of technology to connect people with educational opportunities. Since winning the Award, The Freeplay Foundation has funded the development of the first radio designed specifically for humanitarian purposes. Their current programs focus on distance education and health. They reach out to refugees and to children who have been orphaned by AIDS or conflict and must forgo school to head their households and raise younger siblings. Radios give these children a lifeline to continue learning through on-air education programs, and the familiar radio programs help children feel safer and more connected to the outside world.
In her travels across Africa, Kristine Pearson, The Freeplay Foundation's executive director, was moved by the strength and struggles of people living with illness, poverty, and political instability. She realized that one of their greatest needs was to be connected to education and practical information. Pearson understood that having access to information would be a true lifeline. Many of the people Pearson met could not read and if they did, newspapers were not available in rural areas. And while millions of dollars were spent each year to create valuable radio programs covering health, business, politics, current events, and classroom lessons, the batteries to run radios are expensive, and electrification reaches only ten percent of sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, even when people had radios, the devices were often useless. Hence, the Freeplay Foundation motto: "When batteries die, learning stops."
When The Freeplay Foundation received the Tech Museum's first Education Award in 2001, they were filling the information and education gap by distributing durable wind-up and solar-powered radios across Africa. The Foundation epitomized the spirit of the Education Award: they were using accessible technology in a smart, innovative way, and in doing so, they were opening educational opportunities where they had once not existed at all. Put simply, Freeplay's radios were the link between information and the people who needed it most.
At the time of the Tech Museum Awards, Pearson had been traveling through Rwanda. On her travels she met countless children who had been orphaned by AIDS or genocide, and were bearing burdens far beyond their years. Many, especially young girls, were sacrificing their own educations to raise younger siblings and head their households. Pearson was inspired to develop a radio especially to help connect these children to news and on-air classroom lessons.
The funds from the Tech Museum Award became seed money to develop a new radio-the first created specifically for humanitarian purposes. The developers worked with users who had received the earlier radios, including children in Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa, incorporating their suggestions for a radio that was easy to carry into the field, could play for hours non-stop, and would be extremely durable. The result was the Lifeline radio.
To date almost 20% of Rwanda's 65,000 child-headed households are benefiting from the radio. As one 13-year-old survivor of genocide explained, "My most important thing I owned used to be my goat, now it is my radio." Many of the children say that the voice they most trust is the one they hear on the radio, and that listening to the radio helps them feel safe at night.
In other countries too, Lifeline radios are making lives better. Young people in Zambia who use their radios to listen to the educational program "Learning at Taonga Market" score higher on national tests than students in conventional schools. Freeplay radio recipients listen to programs with information they need to survive and improve their lives, such as a program teaching farmers about starting small businesses, bookkeeping, and obtaining micro-credit. Young refugees join listening clubs to learn about HIV/AIDS, violence, and ways of healing wounds after many years of conflict.
Paul Niyigara has been raising his brother and sister in the Ngara refugee camp in Tanzania since 1996. His radio makes his world feel smaller, and more comforting. He explains that he learns, "about AIDS and boiling water to kill germs. I also hear about my country on the radio. I hear about the war in Burundi, and how it started. When I listen to the radio I get news about my home. It helps me feel closer to my family members who are still there. Although I haven't spoken to them in many years, I feel closer to them than to other people in the camp. I am proud of my radio. When I walk in the street, people always ask me if they can touch it."
The Freeplay Foundation's latest program is the biggest communications initiative in Africa to date and will distribute 10,000 more Lifeline radios to the ministry of education, major aid agencies, and other organizations helping the economically disadvantaged of Kenya. The Freeplay Foundation believes radio distance learning, which can reach large numbers efficiently and quickly, must be expanded and targeted to students both in and out of school. This is the aim of the Radios for Education in Africa Project (REAP). If thousands or, indeed, millions of African people have access to radios that work all the time-24 hours a day-adults and children alike can learn anywhere. They will be able to listen in public places or while working in the fields, as well as when taking care of infants or sick relatives inside the home. Education will be everywhere.
The Foundation is expanding beyond Africa, exploring ways to distribute radios in Latin America and India. They are also investigating new channels to market including micro-lending, where the Lifeline radio and other self-powered alternative energy products, such as foot-powered electrical generators, can be made available to poor consumers. The Foundation's two-year plan will connect five million people with the educational opportunities made possible by their unique, self-powered radios.
