Marlon Parker is a Cape Town PhD student and lecturer who started a drug counseling service using Mxit. He says that it's the world's first mobile counseling system and that it is being managed and driven by community members. After chatting online, Marlon and his team invite addicts to the centre for one-on-one counselling sessions. Addicts in other areas are referred to more local counselling services. Says Marlon, 'The greatest impact of the work we are doing is seeing communities gaining hope and working together to see reconstruction of citizens.'
Marlon believes that the problem with online education in South Africa is that it is largely focussed to the formal education sector. 'Much more could be done to enhance general education to address unemployment issues due to lack of expertise or skills,' he says. 'We should stop trying to emulate the developed world's online educational solutions but rather birth localised innovations for Southern and the rest of Africa.'
It's not all bad, says Marlon. 'A positive is that we've leap-frogged many other Developed nations with regard to online education by being pioneers in the m-Learning field. Although we still have far to go before we've achieve the full potential on mobile learning, more people are confident about its future and about working in this exciting area.'
Marlon is excited about the potential of the GeekRetreat. 'Firstly, I believe that having so many great minds coming together from various backgrounds, industries and expertise in one location is reason enough to be excited about the geekretreat. I am also excited to learn from the best and exchange knowledge for the good of ALL South Africans.'
Marlon hopes to develop partnerships at the retreat and to learn about business models for social and educational projects to ensure sustainability.
Marlon Parker is an Old Mutual GeekRetreat scholar.
