Keshav Sabapathi '25, co-founder of EDCET, a non-profit providing LMS systems to areas which lack reliable internet infrastructure, reflects on his recent trip to Nepal and the power of technology to break barriers and create access.
I am the co-founder of EDCET, an EdTech initiative focused on bringing a high-quality education to rural public and private schools in Africa. The initiative contains a Learning Management System (LMS), where teachers can implement our offline learning services. Internet is a large problem in Africa, so this LMS is completely offline, and each student can complete work on their individual Chromebooks which we supply.
Before co-founding this organization, I worked with various non-profit organizations that shared my goal of providing quality education in rural areas through EdTech. However, I disagreed with their donation-driven, money-based approach to supporting schools. Instead, I wanted to use that money to develop a completely offline software system that contains the Kenyan curriculum and bring EdTech to these rural public schools.
This past spring break, I spent two weeks in Nepal to expand the reach of our LMS to schools in the Himalayan region near Everest Base Camp (EBC). My dad and I embarked on a 7-day trek through the Nepalese Himalayas, reaching EBC and climbing Mount Kala Pathhar. However, the true purpose of this trip wasn't just to climb mountains and take in the views of Mount Everest; it was to discuss the possibility of integrating our LMS software to schools in the region. We visited four different schools in the Nepalese Himalayas, where I presented our LMS software and discussed with their principals about potentially integrating it into their curriculum. Three of the four schools were very excited about implementing our system and showed tons of appreciation for our efforts to improve quality of education in their region, as we had already done more in our two weeks there to improve Nepal’s quality of education than their own government had. We are also planning to integrate into schools in Bolivia.
Co-founding EDCET has been a life-changing opportunity that was driven by my belief that every student deserves access to a high-quality education, regardless of their location and socioeconomic status. Bringing our LMS to rural schools in Africa, the Himalayas, and now Bolivia has shown me the power that technology holds to fix educational inequalities and barriers. Already seeing the enthusiasm of the schools I visited and witnessing the impact our platform has already had in Kenya has been very inspiring. This experience has given me tons of hope for the future and assuring that every student can and will receive a high-quality education. I look forward to scaling our platform even further and providing more disadvantaged students around the world with the necessary tools needed for a quality education.