EDC – South Sudan

Audio Training in South Sudan

This project marked the beginning of OMPT’s journey to bring technological solutions to under-served communities in the poorest parts of the world.

Here in Juba, OMPT worked with Education Development Center (EDC) as a resource for their audio training. At this time, South Sudan was using interactive radio instruction to provide lessons and instruction in the classroom. There were several problems with this approach, which OMPT Executive Director Matt York elaborates on:

"Using radio in the classroom, the teacher has no control over starting or stopping the audio lesson; the teacher could never pause the audio lessons. Also, while Sudan had a robust radio program, it couldn’t reach people in the Nuba Mountains. With some populations, we found that their traditions and daily routines prevented them from listening to radio at certain times, and so they would miss valuable information.

"Our solution was to introduce portable media players as an alternative to using radio. The content for lessons could be distributed on flash media USB sticks or SD cards; this was a new concept at the time. Portable media players were only able to be used for audio because LED light engines and pico-projectors had not yet been developed. Portable media players had two big advantages: they allowed the teachers to choose the time of day to present the lessons and the teacher was able to control the schedule of the audio lessons. Portable media players also allowed for the use of audio lessons in remote places where radio signals could not reach, in the mountainous areas of Sudan for example.”

This was the first deployment of a portable media player ever in conjunction with interactive radio instruction and was a huge step forward in making valuable information more accessible for remote populations.

A playlist of OMPT’s Education videos can be found here.

Help support our mission to bring video education to the developing world by donating.

• Discipline: Basic Education

• Location: South Sudan

• Partner: Education Development Center (EDC) is a global non-profit organization that works to improve basic education, health and economic development in rural areas by implementing effective programs. Projects are conducted in Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America.

• Project Date: November 2009

  This project falls under the following Sustainable Development Goals. To learn more, click on the image(s) below.