Executive Summary

Project Host

Fellows

Christopher Melville, Social Entrepreneur Fellow

Sergio Medina, Social Entrepreneur Fellow

Alejandro Villanueva, Social Entrepreneur Fellow

Introduction

Thate Pan Hub (TPH), a Myanmar-based social enterprise building computer science learning opportunities through a gamified platform, is on the outer curve of innovation. They are figuring out how to create easily accessible learning opportunities in an unstable political landscape, in a society shaped by decades of armed conflict, and in an educational system not fully supported by an ecosystem of institutions. These contextual factors place TPH in a humanitarian aid and international development category, yet, at the same time, they are able to draw upon leading educational approaches that we all hope might leapfrog them into a new category of greater impact. If TPH is successful in their work, they would be a model for how to deliver culturally-relevant educational opportunities for a difficult-to-reach group of learners, and their doing so would have great implications for delivering education in emergencies.

To delve deeper into how their work could positively impact students, TPH responded to a call for proposals for organizations looking to scale their operations in education and expand the evidence base of their impact. TPH was one of several organizations selected for the opportunity, which came with 12 weeks of support from a team of consultants working with them to address a challenge they face. The project is a collaboration between The Jacobs Foundation, MIT Solve, LEAP Fellows, and the organizations themselves.

TPH was paired with a team of four LEAP Fellows who have considerable experience and expertise in social entrepreneurship (having founded and/or operate social enterprises themselves), and research (many of whom hold academic positions at universities).

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Organization’s role & strength

Coming into the project, TPH proposed working with the fellows to expand the menu of features for their computer-science-focused platform. Their proposal stood out because it signaled that they were motivated to build, get the app out there, and get it into the hands of Burmese students for the children’s use and benefit.

Need summary

Settling into the project more, we realized that helping them build out product features would be useful, but, we also quickly realized that, given the short timeframe, it would be many times more impactful to spend the time helping them build the skills to approach product, organizational, and design challenges they will for certain face as they grow. This approach will set them up with a more comprehensive capability as a team long after this engagement ends.

Solution summary & next steps

The revised project was ultimately a program of workshops with a strong focus on experimentation. The experimental parameters were to identify a problem or challenge or pose a question, and then gather the research and evidence to develop a potential solution.

Over the course of these 12 weeks, we conducted six workshops in keeping with this theme. The focus of each is below:

In Pedagogy, we focused on the relationship between user testing and the product’s theory of change
In Design, we focused on activity-based research methods
In Technology, we focused on high scalability with under-resourced orgs
In Business Model, we focused on rapid iteration to generate a bank of options
In Product Roadmap, we focused on user testing to guide development and
In Strategy, beyond the recommendations we made, we provided TPH with the resources for them to periodically check-in with themselves and draw upon various interviewing and research techniques, which will ultimately help them arrive at a more well-informed decision

The overarching question that TPH is trying to answer is: “How might we increase CS learning outcomes for children and youth in a post-conflict, emergency, humanitarian, and development context?” Undoubtedly, TPH will face many more product, organization, and expansion decisions in the future, and this framework of investigating and exploring is a tried and tested method to gather field-based information to better inform the decision-making process.

Over the course of this report, the various activities conducted with TPH are summarized and serve as a tangible example on how TPH can use experimentation methods to support organizational or product decisions in the future.