Free Internet Zones Create New Opportunities for Education in Guatemala

By Diego Aguirre and Elizabeth Marsden (BEC Member, RTI International)

Secondary school student Keilyn Iboy (right) enjoys access to free internet services with her younger brother, Jefry Alfredo, and their mother, in a local park. Credit: USAID BEQT Activity.

Telemedicine. Shopping. Online learning.

Many aspects of everyday life take place online these days, and education is no exception. In Guatemala, internet infrastructure and devices are frequently available, but the cost is prohibitive: For the poorest 40 percent of Guatemalans, the price of broadband internet is equivalent to 28 percent of household income.

Free community internet means children and youth can take online courses, learn a new language, download books, and conduct research for school projects—expanding opportunities for students to learn and for communities to connect.

Through the USAID Basic Education Quality and Transitions Activity (BEQT), RTI has partnered with Guatemalan social enterprise Wayfree to scale its free internet model to schools and communities for more flexible education access, expanding coverage to 100 percent of municipalities in Baja Verapaz, Huehuetenango, El Quiché, and San Marcos through 92 internet hotspots in community parks.

This partnership is helping change the educational trajectory for students like Keilyn Iboy, one of the few young women in her community to transition from elementary to secondary school. She uses the free internet in her local park to learn more about science, her favorite subject.

"For me, school has been a place where I could find out how much I love natural sciences and to learn how to search online for videos explaining more about science,” Keilyn says. “Now that I'm on school vacation, I am teaching my little brother everything I learned, using the internet at the (municipal) park."  

We spoke with Diego Aguirre, Chief Impact Officer at Wayfree, and Elizabeth Marsden, a Project Coordinator at RTI, to learn more about this innovative partnership and what it means for locally led development.

What are the challenges facing education in Guatemala and how is this partnership addressing them?

Elizabeth: The BEQT project focuses on the Western Highlands of Guatemala, where the population is majority indigenous and faces issues like poverty, gender inequity, and long-standing gaps in access to necessities, like the internet and education, especially for Mayan language speakers.

When crises hit, these gaps become chasms. This project is enabling more remote and nontraditional learning opportunities in these disenfranchised areas, with a focus on the transition from primary to lower secondary school, as this is when students experience particularly high dropout rates. And the more options we can give students to learn, the more chances they’ll have for educational success.

Diego: COVID-19 drove so much online and the fast-paced digital transformation it sparked went beyond internet for social media and communication: health, education, work, and more, moved online. A few years ago, Wayfree began deploying free internet access in parks in Guatemala using an ad-based model that requires a user to view an advertisement or take a survey to get free internet access.

These free internet zones have brought community members together digitally and physically in the parks. Parents, grandparents, teachers, and students use these zones to access what they need, and students can register with their age to receive targeted education-related updates and resources, and to work on their homework.

Through USAID BEQT, RTI has partnered with Wayfree to deploy free internet access in parks in Guatemala using an ad-based model. Credit: Wayfree

How is this partnership building a sustainable model for internet access that can benefit educational opportunity in Guatemala?

Diego: Alliances have been powerful for sustainability. We’ve developed cooperative agreements with municipalities and utility companies across Guatemala to leverage their existing infrastructure to expand internet access to previously unreached areas. This has been huge for our ability to scale rapidly and cost effectively.

The project helps with hardware and installation and, once communities have access, it becomes self-funding through the ads and sponsored surveys. We’re committed to maintaining this service, even after the project ends. Our goal is to make the internet accessible to everyone.

Elizabeth: COVID-19 showed the world how important flexible models of education are. Expanding internet access opens a world of possibilities. The project has deployed computers in schools and community centers and is working on digital literacy, but it all starts with our partnership with Wayfree to scale free internet to areas that need it.

In some cases, local internet isn’t available at all and in others, the cost of internet access puts it out of reach for most families. Our partnership with Wayfree directly addresses both issues. And, as a local Guatemalan organization, Wayfree is not only meeting the project’s needs, but is expanding across Guatemala, and to other countries as well.

Diego Aguirre, Chief Impact Officer at Wayfree, demonstrates how to use the free Wi-Fi made possible by USAID at a park in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. Credit: Wayfree

What have your respective organizations been learning through this process of working together and on this education project?

Diego: First, we’re finding that the free internet zones in parks go beyond a digital connection and accessing educational resources. Community members are making physical, offline connections to one another as they gather in these spaces, which is creating a sense of community belonging, connection, and identity.

Second, we’ve been amazed to see just how much of the younger generation is using these zones. We’ve provided nearly 10 million free internet sessions since our collaboration began in 2021, with about 42% involving users who are under 25 years old.

Third, this partnership has helped us level up our understanding of the traditional aid sector and how to quantify and showcase our impact in a way that appeals to funders and, as a result, we’ve already been able to connect with other donors in the aid space. We’re excited about this additional avenue for growing our social impact-focused business.

Elizabeth: In tech, there is a tendency to think “West is best,” but there are so many local technology organizations, like Wayfree, that are innovating and doing very interesting work that aid projects can connect with, if we take the time to seek them out and be creative about how they can fit into project needs. It’s been a wonderful experience working with Wayfree. In fact, we’re excited to be partnering with Wayfree on at least two additional donor-funded projects in Latin America in the near future.

Our partnership didn’t start with a capacity building conversation, but rather with asking how we could help each other and the communities we were engaged with, and we’ve been learning more about one another as we work together. Locally led development runs into challenges when it becomes dictating needs to local organizations and expecting them to get up to speed all at once on how the aid world works. Through this partnership we’ve been able to work with Wayfree on something they were already doing, which they’ve continued to run with while learning USAID requirements along the way. This partnership feels like a true triple win as it has brought together USAID resources, RTI’s experience, and Wayfree’s local knowledge, relationships, and innovative solutions to make a difference in rural students’ lives. 

Learn more about RTI’s work in Guatemala and in international education.

International Youth Day: Skill Building to Thrive in an Increasingly Digital World

Written by Maxie Gluckman and Brittany Aubin (IREX) 

This International Youth Day, BEC and IREX want to celebrate Africa’s richest and fastest growing resource— youth! There is an unprecedented pool of talent within the continent, fueled by a growing population with increased access to educational opportunities (AUC/OECD, 2024). However, as in the rest of the world, there is an increasing need to ensure that these young people can access quality skills development that is aligned with the labor market’s needs, so they can transform their own lives and drive their countries’ economic development.

This is particularly true for digital skill development. While there is a growing familiarity and comfort with basic digital skills – such as smartphone use, email, basic file management, and web browsing – across the continent, the demand for intermediate digital skills – such as e-commerce and financial software, professional social media, and data entry and management – is rapidly outpacing the existing supply. According to UNICEF’s Learning and Skills database, across 15 African countries, only 5% of young people presently possess these intermediate digital skills (UNICEF, 2022). Skills gaps are even more pronounced for women and marginalized communities, which limits their participation in the digital economy, entrepreneurship, and decision-making processes related to technology (ILO, 2023; UNICEF, 2023).

As the science fiction writer William Gibson once said, “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” In a world that feels more like science fiction every day, how can we extend access to the digital skills that allow everyone to take advantage of this future? IREX weighs in on its innovative solution, Digital ESE, and the learnings from their recent pilot experience in Nairobi, Kenya.

Bridging the Digital Skills Gap, with “ESE”: Efficiently, Safely, and Effectively

IREX developed its Digital-ESE (Efficiently, Safely, and Effectively) curriculum with and for youth to enhance their skills as “power learners” in digital upskilling, building their confidence and skills to navigate self-directed learning opportunities efficiently, safely, and effectively. “Power learners” are people who capitalize on learning opportunities, apply their learning in the workplace, and drive their own professional development (IREX, 2020). Our approach to youth development acknowledges that youth are already adept at overcoming barriers and identifying the steps they need to take to drive their own lives.

In the absence of curricula that include workplace skills and employers that prioritize professional development, youth are actively taking the initiative to acquire new digital skills through non-traditional and self-directed means. The Digital-ESE self-guided modules aim to accelerate and strengthen these efforts by coaching youth through identifying opportunities to improve digital skills, cultivating effective learning environments, evaluating their learning progress, navigating online spaces safely and responsibly, engaging in a digital learning community, and leveraging digital skill-building efforts to promote professional growth.   

To develop Digital-ESE, IREX interviewed 44 urban and peri-urban Kenyan youth about their experiences with digital skill-building. Based on those interviews, IREX created a custom generative AI tool that produced authentic scenarios and a representative persona of a youth digital upskiller, named Wanjiku. The Digital-ESE curriculum is grounded in Wanjiku’s story, which pulls from the lived experiences and challenges with learning online that the interviewees described.

Youth Upskill and See Themselves Represented in Wanjiku

On June 22, 2024, 14 female youth joined IREX and their partner youth-led organization Safe Online Women (SOW-Kenya) for the Digital-ESE pilot at the IREX office in Nairobi. Throughout the day, SOW-Kenya’s expert facilitators guided participants through story-based scenarios, instructional content, and interactive activities where they identified connections with Wanjiku’s story and built a personalized learner profile for putting their digital sills into practice.

Employing the hashtag #WanjikuAndI, participants shared what stood out most to them through the session. Reflecting on the risks of mis- and dis-information, one woman commented, “I now understand that I should not fully rely on online resources and that I should fact check to ensure I use information that is from legitimate sources.” Another participant summarized her learning as “I should be keen on whatever I share online since there is footprint, we leave behind it that is usually beyond our control... Also, there are places to report cyberbullying and cookies put us at risk, tracking the stored information.”  

IREX has captured some Digital-ESE learnings, including a literature review detailing the importance of digital skill development efforts which can be found here.

Skill Building to Keep Pace with an Increasingly Digital Future

As new digital technologies continue to accelerate us into the future, we will all spend more of our professional lives in self-directed online learning. The Digital-ESE curriculum provides useful guidance to empower youth to learn effectively and efficiently, recognizing the many other draws on their time and resources, and to practice safety measures while spending more time in digital spaces. Wanjiku may not be real, but her story represents that of many young people who are eager to capitalize on this moment of digital transformation. While IREX wrote the end of Wanjiku's story, we are excited to see the stories of today's youth that have yet to be written, and that will help define and advance the future.

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AUC/OECD (2024). Africa's Development Dynamics 2024: Skills, Jobs and Productivity. Addis Ababa/OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/df06c7a4-en

ILO (2023). Youth Skills: Tackling Challenges and Seizing Opportunities for a Brighter Future of Work. https://ilostat.ilo.org/blog/youth-skills-tackling-challenges-and-seizing-opportunities-for-a-brighter-future-of-work/

IREX (2020). Power Learning Tool Employee Essential Skills. https://www.irex.org/sites/default/files/node/resource/power-learning-tool-employee-essential-skills.pdf

UNICEF (2023). Recovering Learning: Are Children and Youth on Track in Skills Development?  www.unicef.org/media/123626/file/UNICEF_Recovering_Learning_Report_EN.pdf.pdf.

UNICEF (2022). UNICEF Global Database on Information and Communications Technology  Skills. https://data.unicef.org/resources/dataset/learning-and-skills/

Joining the Fight against Lead Pollution in Zambia

Blog by Dr. Joseph Isaac — technical advisor for EDC’s International Development Division.

Dr. Isaac leads the Inspiring Climate Action Now (ICAN) primary science project. ICAN works with the Ministries of Education and Environment in Mali, Antigua & Barbuda, and Zambia to train teachers to more effectively deliver science education and information about climate, science, and climate change to primary school students and their communities. ICAN empowers teachers to identify and react to pressing local environmental issues, including lead poisoning. After the training, teachers implement their lessons during a six-week period of their school year.

In this question and answer session, Dr. Isaac discusses lead pollution in Zambia and ICAN’s efforts in addressing this issue.

Q. What causes lead poisoning and pollution?

Dr. Isaac: In the United States, lead poisoning mainly involves pipes and paint. Before people knew the dangers of lead, most of our water and sewage pipes were made of lead. Another source of lead that can cause harmful health effects is household and industrial paint.

However, in Zambia, one of the pilot countries for ICAN, lead contamination comes from an entirely different source. Zambia has extensive mining operations, and the industrial complex surrounding mining is causing a significant amount of lead to leach into the ground, contaminating the groundwater and community wells.

One important example in Zambia is the town of Kabwe, a historic hub for lead mining. As a result of 90 years of operation, thousands of Zambians living and working in Kabwe have suffered from lead poisoning, with 95% of children in Kabwe having high lead levels. In 2021, the World Bank reported that 2,500 children participating in a World Bank project in Kabwe had lead levels so high they required immediate treatment. The amount of lead in the soil still remains high even though the mine closed down 30 years ago.

Q. How is lead poisoning linked to education? How does it affect children’s learning?

Dr. Isaac: A lot of research has been done over the last 50 years about how dangerous lead can be to the human body. Lead poisoning and lead exposure can cause severe developmental delays and affect children’s nervous systems, especially in young children or children exposed to lead before birth. These developmental delays then have adverse downstream effects on children’s educational achievement. Children with lead poisoning have a harder time paying attention, which also affects their learning. In some cases, lead poisoning may impair children’s speech and hearing or cause seizures. You might not see these long-term detrimental effects immediately, but there’s a definite connection between lower student performance and lead exposure.

Q. How are the teachers you’ve worked with in Zambia addressing this problem?

Dr. Isaac: Through the ICAN pilot, teachers are developing climate science lessons, including lessons on pollution and how students can get their families and communities involved in preventive efforts—for example, conducting a community information session about the dangers of lead poisoning and providing ideas and examples for avoiding lead exposure. During our ICAN training in Zambia, teacher teams particularly wanted to include lead poisoning in their lessons. They explained how mining operations affect the water table and well water. They were seeing the effects and wanted to respond, and now they are working to educate people further.

Q. How do teachers across ICAN pilot countries increase awareness and foster community engagement around these environmental issues?

Dr. Isaac: ICAN is a unique program that gives teachers the power to develop their own lessons. Climate science issues in Zambia are different from the issues in Mali and from the issues in Antigua and Barbuda. However, at the same time, they’re loosely related under this giant umbrella of environmental science, climate science, and climate change. ICAN teachers will inevitably produce a variety of lessons that will cater to the specific needs of their community and ecosystems, and they will also be able to share and learn from teachers in similar communities and those with different challenges to build a network of learning and action.

In Mali, teachers are already implementing the lessons they developed, and most lessons include a community engagement component. For example, a teacher may ask students to create a poster and put it up in a community center to inform others about lead in the water, or they may bring the issue to their parents to share lead management information at the next church service.

They can decide what issues are important to cover and how. The teachers are using grassroots ground-level efforts to increase knowledge and promote action in the community’s interests.

Q. How do you want to see the ICAN project grow in the future?

Dr. Isaac: We’ll use the data from our three pilots to help us adapt and expand ICAN and reach out to even more countries. I would love for us to be in 5 to 10 countries in five years—and expanding not only in countries but also in grade levels. Right now, we’re specifically looking at grade levels 2 and 5. I would like to move that up to 7 or 8 as well so that we’re expanding outward and upward.

ICAN is a perfect entry point into citizen science. It’s designed to involve community members and respond to the issues they are seeing. In this way, science is not limited to people in lab coats in university labs or governmental buildings. Their everyday decisions and life actions are scientifically rooted. Especially when it comes to their livelihoods and how communities respond to the environmental issues that are becoming more and more pressing in their lives, this process starts teachers, students, and communities on the road to developing preventive, therapeutic, or mitigation measures. When you start by educating young people, a lot can be accomplished.

Read EDC’s original blog post here.