RLabs Membership Programme

The aim of this program is to encourage collaboration, co-creation, learning, innovation and provide our members from the community, students, entrepreneurs and those in need an inspiration space. The program will offer a variety of membership packages based on the needs of the members.

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Silver Membership (FREE)

Members will have access to a maximum of 5 sessions a month to a “hot desk” with internet (30min each) *

You will have first preference on ALL courses being offered at RLabs.

Receives a 10% discount on ALL professional workshops and events hosted by RLabs.

48 hour advanced booking required

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Gold Membership ($20 per month)

Members will have access to a maximum of 5 sessions a month to a “hot desk” with internet (60min each) *

You will have first preference on ALL courses being offered at the RLabs Academy.

Receives a 20% discount on ALL professional workshops and events hosted by RLabs.

24 hour advanced booking required for hotdesk

FREE coffee

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Platinum Membership ($40 per month)

Members will have access to maximum of 10 sessions a month to a “hot desk” with internet (60min each) *

You will have first preference on ALL courses being offered at the RLabs Academy.

Receives a 30% discount on ALL professional workshops and events hosted by RLabs.

24 hour advanced booking required for hot desk

Joint membership (allow one other person to use your membership benefits)

1 hour access to board room and audio/visual facilities every quarter

Tech. support while at RLabs

Printing facilities (limited to 100 pages)

FREE coffee

Seats are limited and if you are interested in registration for the RLabs membership programme please contact us and we will get back to you about your application. Please note that the membership is only valid with the local RLabs where you registered and plans to allow global access will be announced soon. Special arrangements can be made if you are traveling and the local RLabs have space available for you to access.

* While seats are available. Gold and Platinum members get first preference on available seats.

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The project is still in development and hope to go live first half of 2012. Below you can see some screenshots of the “RLabs” application:

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She’s The Geek will be incubated (watch short interview with Co-founder Monique Ross above) as it will develop a number of innovative programmes focusing on women empowerment and technology entrepreneurship. RLabs will continue introducing the various projects over the next few weeks that will be hosted in the Innovation Incubator and Accelerator and excited to see these Social Enterprises going from strength to strength.

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The room was then filled with excitement as the graduates took to the stage as we celebrated with the following groups of graduates:

- Mom 4.0
- Social and New Media
- Advanced Social and New Media
- Geeky Moms
- Web Development
- Entrepreneurship
- Video Editing
- Image Editing
- The Legacy Programme
- DigiWomen
- DigiMission

The evening then climaxed with special awards for the Social Media Enthusiast (prize for person who showed the most growth and passion during their classes), Social Media Socialite (prize for person who went beyond just what they were taught in class and who really embraced social media), RLabs Junior Achiever and RLabs Academy Achiever (the prize for overall growth and progress in the academy). Seeing all the graduates who persevered and how many of them have grown this year having an appetite for learning was incredible.

Therefore RLabs would like to thank all our sponsors for their contributions at the graduation JamiiX, Nokia South Africa, Springleap, Lagoon Beach Hotel, Vodacom and a special thank to Garry Adams who provided the atmosphere with lights and sound at the event. All of you made the evening special for our graduates.

To our Graduates each and every one of you were so amazing on the night and we wish you all the best for the future. May 2012 be an even bigger and greater year for you as you increase your appetite for learning.

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As we arrived we were directed to a school (read TANZICT post about the experience)where more than 150 learners were waiting for us to discussion social innovation and entrepreneurship. Spending time with this amazing group of young people who are passionate about their communities and social change taught me THREE valuable Social Entrepreneurship lessons:

1) Adversity is the catalysts for innovation. In a community where the learners indicated that the main problems are water, electricity, infrastructure and connectivity were the key drivers for social innovation in the community.

2) Community-driven innovation initiatives are great opportunities to grow into social enterprises. Some of the learners saw an opportunity to start a gardening project where they can grow produce that can possibly be sold to members of the local community.

3) Tension in communities do bring together a wide range of people who as a collective can address the problems in a sustainable way. Through the GSE program it is amazing to see how a number of different stakeholders in Morogoro along with the learners and schools are coming together to make a difference in their communities.

The experience with the learners was nothing short of being special and their passion to learn about entrepreneurship with a social impact tells me that Morogoro, Tanzania has a bright future ahead with world-class leaders.

Source: http://marlonparker.co.za

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Arriving in Dar es Salaam a few days ago brought an air of excitement in that it is a city with so much potential and a growing interest in technology. The RLabs visit was in partnership with TANZICT that stands for The Information Society and ICT Sector Development Project. It’s bilateral collaboration project between the Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology of Tanzania (MCST) and Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

The project’s overall objective is a strengthened Tanzanian information society with enhanced capacities to contribute to the achievement of the Government’s socio-economic development goals.

The project is organized in three components:

1) Support the revision of the national ICT policy and start of the implementation.
2) Strengthen the Institutional capacity of MCST.
3) Create Tanzanian Innovation Program.

Social Entrepreneurship and its role in leaving a social impact:

The first session we had at the TANZICT Innovation Hub was to share the story of RLabs and to see the process of using Social Entrepreneurship in making a difference in the community. The presentation (see above) was followed by a discussion with some young entrepreneurs about how they can use Social problems in the community to make a difference. Through some exercises the entrepreneurs grew ideas into addressing local problems their communities are facing in Dar es Salaam. The day ended with some fascinating pitches by mobile entrepreneurs and it showed the potential for having Dar es Salaam as a technology hub for East Africa. The day really highlighted the need for fresh thinking to solve real problems on the African continent and proved that Social Innovation will be at the forefront of bringing the change needed in Tanzania driven by young tech social entrepreneurs.

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At RLabs we use mobile technologies in the following areas:

1) Information Portals

In partnership with MXit (Mobile Social Network), we’ve been able to distribute relevant social content to users via this platform and have more than 140,000 dedicated subscribers to this service with more than a million interactions per month.
We also use mobi-web to distribute similar content where we get over 400,000 visits a month via our mobile web properties. Most of the content deals with issues related to substance abuse, depression, abuse, career advice etc.

2) Information Gathering

We’ve developed different applications and methods to acquire information from users via their mobile phones. It is a low-cost way of accessing data and allows us to constantly know which of our services we can improve to serve our communities better.

3) Mobile Chat

Using the JamiiX platform we’ve been able to engage with more than a million people in 3 years at a grassroots level. We’ve sent more than 50 million messages of hope through these services and we’ve seen the change and transformation in thousands of people.

4) Mobile Social Networking

At RLabs the use of Social networking is crucial and through using it via mobile phones is important. We’ve used mobile social networks for building communities of support where citizens themselves leverage the power of these technologies to uplift and encourage one another.

Looking back we cannot see RLabs without the use of Mobile Technology as the brief descriptions above has revealed that it does make a difference. In total we’ve achieved more than a 100 Million interactions via mobile technology with citizens around the world and if this is only the beginning then we excited about the future as this is after all A SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

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WHAT A SURPRISE by Wendy Jeffries

This should have been my blog for last week , but at least I have a chance to do it today! The geeky moms was really surprised on Saturday morning the 18 of June 2011 we were told that we are going to be doing our geeky session outside of the academy, so each One grabbed a PC and off we went, was it a great surprise!! We were taken for a breakfast at Spur in Vangate mall and did our session from there. This was a super experience to sit amongst so many people and do social media the other guests who had their breakfast there as well must have wondered what was going on with us. We had such a lovely time and to crown it all we were taken to Mug&Bean afterward for something to drink and a slice of cake by one of the geeky moms, then a guy came along and gave each of the geeky moms a beautiful red rose WOW! What an awesome geeky morning.

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