This year has been a time of challenges and learning for ProFuturo, such as the personal stories of teachers and children around the world; and also of success, such as the record number of universities, countries and hackers that participated in #hack4edu. And so will 2024, when the programme will evolve towards greater sustainability and efficiency of the model, always with its beneficiaries in mind.
“We know that families appreciate our programme, that it reduces school dropout rates, that it dramatically increases the motivation of children and teachers in the classroom with the use of digital education. And we want to prove it with evidence”. This is how we got the year off to a start with an interview with Magdalena Brier, our general director, on Mundo Solidario on Radio Exterior (RNE), focusing on the search for learning itself and for improvements to contribute to the transformative power of digital education.
“Prioritise education to accelerate development” was the slogan of our column for EnclaveODS in El Español in January, within the framework of International Education Day.
And with this aspiration, which always guides us, to be able to show the stories behind ProFuturo, we met Gloria, the girl who wants to dedicate her life to science and who dreams and fights for it from a refugee camp in Malawi. We showed it to the whole of society through the elDiario.es report on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Because this evidence is an example of “the digital connection that reduces the education gap in the world”, as was the headline of the article on the programme in Cinco Días.
Awarded at MWC for the best digital contribution to the UN SDGs
Undoubtedly, to follow the path together with our allies, we are specially driven and motivated by recognitions such as the one received from the Mobile World Congress last February, where ProFuturo was awarded the GSMA GLOMO 2023 award in the Tech4Good category, which recognises “initiatives that work tirelessly to ensure that no one is left behind on the road to a true Internet connection”. Within this category, we received the award for the best digital contribution to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
And, precisely in an important milestone on this journey, thousands of people joined us once again this year in the ProFuturo Race, where we have not only added new friends to the #RunnersConCausa initiative, but we have also built loyalty among families and runners in an annual event in which sport and education go hand in hand for charitable purposes and serve as a loudspeaker to highlight the programme and raise awareness of our work.
Aware of the importance of technology in educational development, this spring we presented the report El futuro de la Inteligencia Artificial en educación en América Latina (The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Education in Latin America), drawn up together with the Organisation of Ibero-American States (OEI).
Furthermore, we have created the Map of Best Practices in Digital Education in the Americas, with the Organisation of American States (OAS), which strives to inspire and act as a compass on the road to global educational transformation.
This year we celebrated Africa Day in collaboration with the Kukah Centre, a partner of the programme in Nigeria, who visited ProFuturo in Madrid, and who explained first-hand how the programme is implemented in his country to media such as TVE (Telediario 2), EL PAÍS (Planeta Futuro) and the magazine Mundo Negro.
Personal stories, the lifeblood of ProFuturo
During this time, we have also heard other stories, such as those of Tonny Muzale and Elvis Bisoboka, who walk four kilometres to school from their respective villages in Uganda. “Thanks to ProFuturo, my son has stopped running away from school”, Elvis’ mother, who supports her five children on the income from a small farm after her husband abandoned them, told us in June. There are many other first-person accounts, such as that of Emilia Claudete in Angola, who dreams of owning a brick house and being independent. These are testimonies that humanise the possibilities of this programme, which gather evidence and confirm that children have a future thanks to digital education.
We have also joined the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC) to foster educational recovery and transformation in the region. Among other collaborations, within the framework of Refugee Day we participated in the International Cooperation panel of the Spain with Refugees Forum organised by UNHCR. And we have signed a collaboration agreement with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) with a view to improving the educational quality of almost 2,500 children in emergencies through an innovative digital education project seeking to create future opportunities in Tanzania.
We once again participated in the sixth edition of enlightED, the world conference on education, technology and innovation, an unmissable event for ProFuturo where the conclusions of UNESCO’s GEM 2023 Report (Global Education Monitoring Report) were presented for the first time in Spain.
#hack4edu consolidated its position as the hackathon of educational solutions for the most vulnerable
However, the event of the autumn for ProFuturo was undoubtedly #hack4edu, the fourth edition of which broke its own records: 534 hackers from 30 universities from 10 countries have worked on solving 61 technological challenges related to digital education in vulnerable environments. These figures exceed the accumulated figures of the three previous editions combined: 415 hackers, 16 universities and 8 countries and 115 challenges. This year’s winners were apps from Mexico, Portugal and Brazil focusing on the detection of emotions in learning, a collaborative encyclopaedia with AI and support for teachers based on student performance.
In its efforts to bring technology closer to the educational environment, ProFuturo fostered the first didactic guide in Spanish for OctoStudio, the application developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group of the MIT Media Lab that promises to shake up the way in which educators introduce programming and computational thinking in the classroom.
And to round off the year, ProFuturo reached an agreement with a very special partner, Air Europa, which brings equipment and people to most of the countries it operates in, making it possible for education to reach all the vulnerable corners of the planet.
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