You’ll see him sometimes, walking village to village in rural Kenya, 5 laptops strapped to his back. Years ago, when he was in college in Nairobi, Kenya, Caleb Ndaka and his friends decided they wanted to help those who were less fortunate. They realized they all had laptops and a bit of pocket money, something the average person in Kenya did not have. On a whim, they took a road trip to a school in a village with no access to computers. Once there, they spent a few days training the students on computer basics. Their students were awestruck at these lessons and were quickly able to pick up the skills. Caleb was surprised to see such quick progress, realizing he could have a real impact on his country with this work. That was the day Caleb’s business Kids Comp Camp was born. Caleb and his team of four made a quick promo video for Comp Camp which they shared across their network. Suddenly, they received over 50 requests to do similar camps all over East Africa. Caleb hesitated — he was a student and was no expert in training others. While he and his friends had managed to find twenty laptops, they didn’t have proper transportation. They moved from one village to the next — hitchhiking, using public transportation, and walking— carrying the machines in battered, overloaded backpacks. It was a hard life.

However, requests for these camps kept coming in from all over Kenya. The demand made it clear to Caleb that he’d found the work he needed to do.

Caleb is a powerful young man who could use his tech skills to get a traditional software engineering job or use his amazing stage presence to be a theater actor. He could have left the problem of tech illiteracy in his country to someone else. But, Caleb was not having any of that. He’s genuinely excited about the future of the communities they served and loves what the kids create, even after just a day of computer training. Caleb and team realized that instead of simply training kids in schools (which would take a very long time) they needed to train adults to support the kids. Since then, Comp Camp has become for kids… and the adults who love them.

Caleb is already seeing the impact of this work. Last year during elections, one of the requirements was computer literacy since the elections were digitized. Twenty of Comp Camp students worked with the elections commission as clerks.

As told by - Dona Sarkar - Head of Windows Insiders Program at Microsoft.