In the early days of IT varsity, there was a young lady who enrolled for one of our courses. She was a single mum whose name was Thembi, and she lived in abject poverty in a township in Johannesburg.
Thembi was in an abusive relationship – her partner regularly physically abused her and, worse still, her six-year-old daughter. Thembi had had enough. She wanted a change for herself and her daughter.
One day she came across an online advert that spoke about IT varsity and the courses we offered, and she felt like this was for her. And she decided to start studying towards a 1-year qualification with IT varsity. Since she had a full time job, she opted to study part-time.
Thembi excelled. She was enjoying the course, and flying through it.
But one day, four months or so into her studies, she stopped studying. We were able to pick this ups because our support constantly monitoring every learner on our system, using an AI system.
The system tracks learner progress through the system, and it flags learners who slow down or stop, or show some erratic learning behavior. And so, we know when someone who was doing well, but saddlery their academic performance takes an unexpected downturn.
When the system detects this, our support team intervenes by reaching out to the student.
But Thembi’s case was different. When the system flagged her, the support team tried to get in touch with her, but to no avail. They then reached out to another student who lived close by to Thembi, to go to Thembi’s home and check what was wrong.
What she found was horrific.
Thembi had gone through an unimaginably awful experience. She was attacked and almost sexually assaulted, which was deeply distressing. As a result, it severely affected her mentally, making it hard for her to function as usual.
Further, she felt isolated because of the social stigma attached to what happened.
The support team immediately arranged for her to go for counseling, which worked wonders. Within few weeks, she was back on track.
She ultimately completed her studies, and qualified. Best of all, she landed a dream job at one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Isn’t that amazing? If you think about it, Thembi’s story would not have been possible without
technology. She had zero chances of going to study at university for full time studies, but thanks to e-learning technology, we could take the learning to her and give her an opportunity.
Then thanks to the AI reporting system, the support team were able to detect that something was wrong, which eventually led to a happy solution. All this, thanks to tech.
Now, this is what I live for. I live for looking at the various ways in which technology can improve lives.
How can we take education to the most underserved communities in Africa? How can we use technology to take healthcare to them, to take essential services to them? How can we solve problems using technology?
And that is what we should all be aspiring for, because the leaders of the future are going to be the ones who solve the problems of the future by creatively using technology and then establishing businesses around that, that go on to transform our world.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. More of that in the next chapter.
Shabeer Vakadath
Tech alone can’t achieve this. How empathetic your are matters. we can coin a word “Empatechy”. You are always inspiring Sir,