Empowering Communities Through Technology: Sonalake's Commitment to Education

At Sonalake, we believe that it’s important to contribute to the communities around us, and while we pursue lots of initiatives every year, our primary focus is on the adoption of technology in education. The following are two initiatives that we heavily support:

Kinia: Igniting creative technologies in education

One of our proudest collaborations is with Kinia, a not-for-profit social enterprise and charity that we helped to establish.

Kinia delivers and integrates digital learning programmes into schools and youth services, with a special focus on young people who are underserved or less advantaged for various reasons. Kinia has to date trained over 20,000 educators and impacted the learning of 300,000 young people.

Kinia’s learning solutions, developed over many years of research and delivery experience, are in the areas of creative technologies, digital skills and STEM education, with additional unique services in numeracy & literacy. These solutions combine training courses with supporting technology kits and have been developed based on pedagogical principles of problem solving, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration.  

The courses are increasingly delivered to educators through an excellent online learning platform, the Kinia Academy. This approach allows Kinia staff to focus their efforts on supporting the trained educators to apply their newly learned skills into their educational settings. From these settings the young people emerge with much greater potential to confidently create their digital and STEM futures.

The technology kits have been sourced and curated to support the Kinia learning experience.  These kits are on subjects from robotics to virtual reality, film making, podcasting, machine learning, smart energy and green tech (including hydrogen fuel cell model cars) - so from basic to really innovative leading edge material.

Recognition & Credentials:

In addition to its learning solutions, Kinia has a super track record of running big events & awards - where their communities of young people, educators and partners gather to showcase and celebrate their achievements.  

Recognition of achievement is also promoted via Kinia’s credentials program, for both educators and young learners, and the currency of Kinia credentials is growing all the time. 

Funding:

Kinia has grown to an organisation of 25 employees. It secures funding through two main categories:

• Grants: 

Kinia applies for and secures grants from a range of sources including Government, charity foundations and corporate enterprises. These grants are typically targeted to supporting the rollout of Kinia’s learning solutions to specific school and youth service organisations and regions

• Social Enterprise: 

Kinia operates as a not-for-profit social enterprise and earns revenues through sales of its learning solutions. Its most recent innovation in this regard has been the launch of the Kinia shop in November 2024, where its technology kits are available for purchase to the public. 

Gatoto School: Pioneering digital learning in a Nairobi slum

Gatoto School in the Mukuru slum in Nairobi is a beacon of hope. It is also an oasis of support and learning within an extremely challenging environment.

Sonalake personnel have followed and become familiar with this unique school over several years. It is a privately funded school by design, due to the fact that it is heavily integrated into the community and provides a range of services that are beyond the scope of normal government school funding in Kenya. It is thus exclusively dependent on charitable donations.

Our support of the school has been based primarily on the building of an extensive computer lab to provide digital learning opportunities for the children. We worked with Camara, an education charity, to design and fit out the computer lab with a network of 30 laptops, supported by a range of learning software and content.  Challenges ranged from security to internet coverage, but the project was successfully delivered in 2023 and the teachers and pupils of the school have embraced the learning opportunities that it enables and are actively pushing the boundaries of how to develop it further. 

This endeavor aims to not only enhance the learning experience for students but also to set a benchmark for what's possible in digital education within challenging environments, because after all, every child deserves access to quality education and the opportunities that come with digital literacy.

Looking Forward

At Sonalake, we're always exploring new avenues to contribute to our communities, with a keen focus on projects that leverage technology to make a tangible difference. If you have a fresh idea or good cause, please feel free to reach out and share it with us.