A Books to Bytes Revolution for Youth Employment

Making free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide

Team Leader

Tariq Fancy

Solution Summary

Marginalized children around the world face great obstacles to receiving a quality education. Yet we live in an era where skills and employment resources are more abundant than ever. To fill this gap, The Rumie Initiative collects and curates locally-relevant and context-appropriate job skills content from the internet, and sorts and organizes it on its LearnCloud. Rumie now seeks to expand access to these resources with a new LearnCloud Android app.

In partnership with Roshan Telecom, Rumie is testing the app with Roshan employees in Afghanistan. The pilot project’s objectives are to gain the user feedback needed to enhance the app’s user experience and to better understand Afghanistan’s operational environment. These insights will enable Rumie to increase the LearnCloud app’s accessibility to the larger Afghan market and Roshan’s audience of 6.5 million active subscribers.

Market Opportunity

Globally, more than 100 million youth are currently out of primary and lower secondary school.
By 2020, smartphones will connect six billion adults on the planet, enabling those once disconnected to access the vast range of learning materials available online.

Highlights

Winner of Google.org Impact Challenge, 2017
Winner of US Library of Congress Literacy Award, 2016
Winner of Ryerson University Social Venture Pitch Competition, 2016
Y Combinator Accelerator, 2016
Named World’s Best Social Startup, Global Entrepreneurship Week, 2014
Recipient of Atlassian Foundation “10 in 10” Partnership Prize
Recipient of Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Indo-Pacific Development Prize