lyrainafrica

Lyra in Africa works to increase girls' access to education and entrepreneurship through four components: 1) Construction of girls' hostels to keep girls safe so they can complete their secondary education (where secondary schools serve villages up to 30 km apart). Lyra has worked with local government and communities to construct ten hostels by June 2019, accommodating over 1,000 girls annually. 2) Digital learning to promote independent learning skills and self-study. Lyra has provided tablets, offline servers and has installed computer labs in rural schools enabling >4,500 students and teachers to access world-class educational materials (including Wikipedia, Khan Academy and the Tanzanian curriculum offline). 3) Under our Imarika Kijana Project, Lyra provides Livelihoods training for rural school leavers to meet the urgent need for supporting young people to develop new business ideas and improve livelihoods when they leave school. This is specifically important in the rural areas where Lyra is active, as up to 90% of the community members are subsistence farmers. Between July 2018 and November 2019 >200 youth have benefited from the program. 4) Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs): using Care International's model, we have established >165 VSLAs, with >4,600 community members and total savings of over $450,000. This enables members to leverage greater impact from their limited income in order to improve quality of life, by investing their savings and loans in agriculture and businesses, pay school fees and improve housing. We have seen a 3 to 4-fold increase in members' incomes over the past five years. We also support agricultural, livestock and other training.