Say it out loud

For the past 10 years Nicola Harris has built up, under the radar, a stunningly successful NGO helping children in poor township schools transition from mother-tongue tuition to English. Using easily adapted computer software her NGO, Click Learning maintains some 18 000 tablets in 296 schools nationwide. In this edition of Podcasts from the Edge she tells Peter Bruce she aims to expand the number of learners using her carefully-knitted support system of funders, and infrastructure providers, from a current 212 000 to 240 000 by the end of September. Bruce visited one of her labs in the sprawling Mdantsane township outside East London and says he was blown away by the experience. But the secret isn’t in the software, he says. It’s management.