What We Do
We donate innovative technology and grant scholarships. Our projects are run in the least developed countries of the world in order that donations will have the maximum impact. “Least developed” means the bottom third of the countries in the world by Purchasing Power Parity, and preferably countries among those with the highest Fragile States Index. (Learn more about these criteria on our Projects page.)
Click on any of the markers below for details of the projects in the countries in which we work. (Brief descriptions of all of our projects are also available on our Projects page.)
Who We Are
Viaduct Technology In Education Society (TIES) is a non-profit society under the Societies Act of British Columbia, Canada. Our Society is a Canadian a registered charity; our Canada Revenue Agency charity Registration Number is 726245137RR0001. To find out more about registered charity status in Canada, click here.
The charitable purpose of our Society is the advancement of education. The specific purposes from our Constitution define how we carry out our mission:
- To advance education by providing charitable gifts of computers, tablets, and other educational aids to students attending schools in the least developed countries of the world.
- To advance education by granting publicly available scholarships, bursaries, and other forms of financial assistance to secondary school and post-secondary school students in the least developed countries of the world.
Our projects and programs fall into two broad areas in keeping with our purposes.
As our name would suggest, one of the main activities of our Society is the donation of innovative technology to education projects in developing countries. Not just computers and tablets, but game changing tech such as the RACHEL from World Possible. RACHEL stands for Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning. With this small, battery powered device education resources from the internet can be delivered to communities without internet access, in fact even without grid electricity! These plug-and-play hotspots are preloaded with content such as Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and CK12 textbooks, and can be completely customized with user content too. RACHELs have been deployed in over 50 countries.
Our other main activity is providing scholarships and bursaries to high school and university students in several developing countries.
Our projects and programs all work towards achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal #4; “equitable, quality education for all”. We work towards equity in the following ways:
- All of our projects are run for the economically disadvantaged, not just by operating in developing countries but also by running programs that support the most needy groups within those countries.
- Our projects promote gender equity in education by preferentially targeting girls and young women.
- Some of our projects are specifically directed towards Indigenous populations.
Donate
If you’re inspired to donate to TIES, clicking the button below will open our secure donations page on PayPal, or our Donate page gives you further options.
If you’re not ready to donate just yet, but would like to stay in touch, please click the Mailchimp button to sign up for our newsletter:
Join TIES
The founding members (including the current Board of Directors) are four serial volunteers with decades of experience with educational youth groups, service clubs, and other charities. We would love to have you join us! Donors, contributors and sponsors of TIES may apply to become members of the Society, participate in elections, and help set the direction of the Society. Membership is open to anyone age 18 or more. Members do not have to reside in BC, Canada; our meetings allow for remote participation. Use our Contact form to apply to join TIES.