She’s lived in a refugee camp since her family fled war when she was a little girl, but Grace Nshimiyumukiza has always wanted to be the one to help, not just be helped.
First she coached her six younger siblings through classes in Kakuma, one of the world’s largest refugee camps. Then she tutored friends who were struggling in a culture that prioritized childcare and chores for girls, and later she turned inward, teaching herself basic computer skills.
Now her efforts are official: The 23-year-old is a teacher for a program aiming to help 25,000 Kakuma residents become digitally savvy. The camp, where she’s lived for 17 years, is so vast she uses a motorbike to travel around to classrooms, explaining such concepts as what a mouse is before moving on to data entry and how to operate online businesses.
“Teaching has trained me and molded me to be bold,” Nshimiyumukiza says. “My goal for my students is to see them explore and grow into leaders who will stand without fear to fight for peace and development of not just our countries of origin but also the whole of Africa.”
The program in Kakuma is a partnership between UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact organization. The company founded the unit in 2017 as a unique model to complement its philanthropy efforts and help charities get up to speed, amid the realization that although the nonprofit sector spends about $30 billion a year on technology, it still wasn’t participating fully in the digital transformation. Efforts include measures such as training refugees or giving volunteers email addresses to grander concepts like using artificial intelligence to deal with paperwork so Salvation Army caseworkers can have more face time with people who need their help.
“We’re living in this time of amazing technology, wealth and capability, and yet there are 124 million people with life-threatening food insecurity, and the most displaced refugees than any time since World War II,” says Justin Spelhaug, who heads up Tech for Social Impact. “And nonprofits that are on the front line of serving those people have very few resources in terms of technical staff, their dollars are constrained, and solutions haven’t been built for their scenarios. So they’re a decade or more behind in using technology to help with these incredibly important issues.”
While Microsoft has been engaged with charities since 1983 with the inception of its employee giving campaign and donates $1.5 billion a year in software and services through Microsoft Philanthropies, Spelhaug says, “we realized we needed to think about a different business model to serve their needs.”
So Microsoft Philanthropies brought its donation efforts together with commercial sales and business development to create Tech for Social Impact.
The program not only donates technology but also reinvests any profits made from discounted sales to larger charities back into the sector to help smaller ones. It gives free software to those with 10 or fewer employees, which make up 80% of the world’s 4 million nonprofit organizations. It helps nonprofits modify Microsoft software to meet their specific needs — such as fundraising and mobilizing volunteers — in part by connecting them with willing helpers in the company’s global partner ecosystem. And it offers free digital skills training.
That’s where Nshimiyumukiza (pronounced na-SHIM-ee-yoo-moo-KEE-zah) comes in.
Spelhaug recently visited Kakuma, the camp in northwestern Kenya that was built for 70,000 refugees and now hosts 190,000 from 20 countries including Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. They live for years — even decades — in huts, some so fragile that a recent rainstorm nearly flattened the one Nshimiyumukiza lives in with her parents and siblings. Yet Spelhaug describes her as “full of optimism and hope despite the environment she lives in.”
Still, teaching herself how to use a computer, starting with how to log in and then how to create PowerPoint presentations, all while studying for her social-work diploma course, was “very hard,” Nshimiyumukiza says — so hard that it gave her an idea.
“I wanted to train women in basic computer skills” to help them pursue higher education, she says. “But then it was not possible. I didn’t have all the resources. I just had the idea.”
She shared the concept with others in the camp as she went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees through online courses, and earlier this year UNHCR workers reached out to her about the Microsoft digital literacy program, which aims for half of its 25,000 intended students to be women and girls.
“Now here comes people who will train me on how to do it and then give me opportunity to train others,” Nshimiyumukiza says. “It was like a dream come true.”
Her first class was made up of 75 girls from the camp and its surrounding community. She taught them for an intense, week-long course that ran the gauntlet from learning how to turn on a computer to how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint, along with data security. They all passed the test, stoking Nshimiyumukiza’s passion as she thought of her students potentially getting the chance to leave the camp and go on to teach others in their various home countries.
“My energy is always up, no matter how hard it seems,” she says. “Because we want to get youth and women and everybody who lives in Kakuma from a position whereby you depend, to a position where you become very independent. And they will stop relying on what they are given for free. The more you get things for yourself, the more you feel the power and the energy.”
Susanna Ray
Microsoft