In an announcement at the end of last week, Google has teamed up with Moving The Goalposts (MTG) Kilifi to bring football fever to rural communities on the east coast of Kenya as well as Internet-based education. In the evenings MTG is showing matches on a giant screen in rural areas where people would not otherwise have access to television. During the mornings, Google has set up a rural ICT lab to train the MTG girls and provide basic ICT education.

Satellite technology is being set up to provide data connectivity for the rural Internet classroom, funded by Google. In the classroom, the MTG students will be able to learn how to use the Internet and computers as part of storytelling, using video, audio and photographs to communicate with people around the world.

Moving The Goalposts, Kilifi (http://www.mtgk.org) is an organization that uses football to develop essential life skills – confidence, leadership, self esteem – to vulnerable young women. MTG targets teenage girls between the age of 9 and 25 years from poor families. Bringing the girls together around football also provides an opportunity to provide education about reproductive health, human rights and economic empowerment.

Joseph Mucheru, Lead, Google Sub-Saharan Africa said, “This is one of our first initiatives targeted at children in rural areas and we hope to learn from it and continue encouraging rural populations to go online and use the Internet. I am delighted that we are able to support broadcasting the games to thousands of people who are passionate about football. They would not otherwise be part of the football fever sweeping the world for the first championships held in Africa.”

The project started on June 6th 2010 and will finish on July 12th 2010. The location is Kilifi, Kenya, where the Internet classroom is set up at the local MTG centre, and girls from 7 schools around the region are attending the ICT skills training. Meanwhile, the screen will be travelling to a number of sites in the area. They have already been to Mnarani primary school field, Karisa Maitha (Bukungu) Stadium and are currently in Bahati till 22nd June. The screens will also be going to Matsangoni (23-26th June), Silala (27th-29th June) and Ganze centre (from 30th June).