Computer and Internet Access Struggles for MCSOT.

     In January of 2015 Moringa Community School of Trades (MCSOT) had to make the hard choice to temporally discontinue its Satellite Internet Service for lack of available funding.  This was unfortunate but as hard as the decision was to make, meeting our rock bottom baseline $3,400 per month general operations expense had to come first.  This $3400 figure, breaks down to our monthly consumable supply costs, fuel, insurance, and utility expenses, and it also covers MCSOT’s base payroll for 15 staff members at an average of $110/month salary.  Yes you read that figure right.  We can only afford to pay our teachers (most of whom are university or technical school educated) only $110/month.  We wish this were not so but having no reliable funding stream we are not left with much of a choice.

      Anyway, as MoringaCommunity.Org USA’s 2014 total donor contributions were just $23,146 for the entire 2014 year, little funds were left in our treasury at the beginning of 2015 so deep cuts had to be made.   In hind sight, eliminating our access to the Internet for the School compound had a cascading negative effect on MCSOT’s communications and marketing capability, but when the money is just not there hard choices are called for.  

Hired tech contractors from capital trouble shoot connection.

Dapplecroft Fund to the Rescue!                   

     Fortunately in late October, funding was able to be diverted from a third quarter 2015 grant from the Philadelphia Foundation / Dapplecroft Fund to cover the cost of a low bandwidth restoration of our MCSOT Satellite Internet service.  We have three Satellite plans available to choose from.  These are the Freedom 10 plan at $106 US / month, the Freedom 15 plan at 169 us / month, and the Freedom 20 plan at $226 US / month.   Although our Freedom 10 plan has such a low bandwidth it is not that dissimilar to a dial-up connection, it has at least reconnected MCSOT with the outside world and we are grateful for it.

 

Students line up for there turn on MCSOT's Internet Network

      The restoration of the MCSOT Satellite Internet Service in October has proven to be a Godsend not only for the school’s staff and students, it is quickly becoming recognized as a good community asset with the younger population of the village. Ever increasing numbers of late teen and early 20’s villagers are willing to pay a small user fee to MCSOT for access to our satellite service for purposes of securing applications for secondary school, checking email, and other Internet related needs.

And with this re-connection, plans are now afoot to develop an MCSOT Website through SquareSpace.com to develop an Internet presence for the Trade School in Ghana.   It is hoped that through the development of the website, MCSOT can secure more paid tuition students to better help self-fund the school.  While Internet is not commonly available in Ghana, there are a number of Internet Café’s throughout Ghana where those that can read and write can access the Internet.  We believe the literate population of Ghana to be our target sector of the population for securing more significant numbers of tuition paying students.  Currently, MCSOT is often limited to exchanges of labor, goats, or other commodities in exchange for tuition.   Such trades, although helpful, are difficult to transform into funding for actual operating expenses but all is being done to adapt and adjust.
     

Hard copy receipts and documents are now available to locals

 What MCSOT Could Use to Move Forward In Its Quest for Self Sustainability.  
We've already seen a good and easily accessed connection to the Internet is key to MCSOT's future. Currently there are two obstacles in the way of developing such Moringa Information Technology resources. These are lack of working computers and the current low bandwidth connection.  On the computer end, the school currently has only two working computers.  We could easily use at least 10 more PCs.  Laptops are preferred as these are the only ones practical to ship so please contact JeffryLohr@aol.com if you or anyone you know may be able to donate laptop. You can take up to a $500 in-kind deduction (with documentation of value) for such a donation but better yet, your donation will be honored and treasured by MCSOT.  
Along with a strong need for laptops, we are extremely limited on upload and download capability with our current Freedom 10 plan at $1,272 a year Internet Connection but we are hard pressed to afford anything better.  We really need to upgrade to at least the Freedom 15 plan that costs $2,028 a year and much preferably we could make even better use of the Freedom 20 plan at $2,700.  The Freedom 20 would give MCSOT enough bandwidth to open a full service Internet Café which we are confident would help a lot to fund the school. The bandwidth upgrade will depend on securing working laptops but as with everything we’ve done since 2009, all we can do is just begin and hope that some help will show up.

Please help us by donating today!

Please consider donating your old working Laptop by contacting JeffryLohr@aol.com
Also, please please consider donating toward funding a bandwidth upgrade by making a tax deductible donation by clicking DONATE.

Thank for your time to read this.  Please see key earlier (older) posts on the menu.  There is a lot of remarkable news about MCSOT within.   

Note about the New Reference to MCSOT.  Many that have followed this project since 2009 may notice our switch from MCST as the abbreviation for Moringa Community School Of Trades to the new MCSOT.   This is due to the fact that the school is hopeful to develop its own web site in 2016.  As it turns out MCSOT.ORG is the closest available domain name to match the school's name so we'll likely be running with that from here on out.  You will not find anything there as yet if you enter it into your browser but hopefully that will change in 2016.