Teach A Man To Fish Team

Loai Farajallah
 

Online volunteer Loai Farajallah, a second generation refugee from the occupied Palestinian territory living in Jordan, has been providing continuous IT support to Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF) by building data management systems. TAMTF is a British NGO that supports schools in developing countries to increase their financial self-sufficiency, combining class-based lessons with student-run businesses.

What started as a small assignment – creating an online database that allows people to sign up via the website for the NGO’s quarterly newsletter – led to building the IT backbone of many of TAMTF’s projects. The databases and web-based processing tools Loai created helped TAMTF facilitate knowledge sharing amongst a network that expanded from 150 educational organizations and experts across 30 countries in the past to currently more than 1,350 in 105 countries. These tools also helped TAMTF coordinate the annual “Pan-African Award for Entrepreneurship in Education” that provides funding for African NGOs carrying out exceptional work in education as well as the annual “Education That Pays For Itself” conference, which brings together leading practitioners and other stakeholders in financially sustainable education to foster learning and networking

“As TAMTF has grown from a volunteer-led and little known non-profit into a professionally-run and internationally recognized institution, Loai has been there along the way, helping to ensure our data management systems could handle the growing interest our work was generating,” says Nik Kafka, founder and CEO of TAMTF.

Loai Farajallah, native of Palestinian Territories / living in Jordan: “I felt it was possible for me to provide assistance for the poor and marginalized in addition to sharing my skills with others and exchanging experiences. This experience influenced my life a lot! I became more organized, more optimistic & more active.”