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In Latin America, educational systems are very poor, causing a lot of inequality. Traditional teaching methods are too monotonous and outdated, which causes a lack of motivation in students -and teachers -when it comes to learning -and teaching; therefore, students don't reach their full potential, their learning is not efficient. 

We propose a platform -with universal accessibility -with a wide supply of innovative ideas on how to make teaching fun and motivating, which relates school content with creative games, activities and interesting topics for students. This way, students make sense of what they are learning and look up to acquiring new knowledge and skills, which, at the end, makes learning more efficient. 

This platform would help teachers -no matter their location -gain new, original ideas on how to make teaching motivating and fun, improving the education system itself. Education is the base of everything, it empowers people and their communities. 

In Latin American, education systems are deficient and poor; only the few privileged ones get a decent education, which causing a lot of social inequality. Many teachers have good intentions, but don't have the skills to make education efficient. Also, Latin America has a lot of rural communities which live isolated, making it even more difficult to train teachers with innovative skills. 

If children don't receive a good education, they don't get to reach their full potencial in life, being unable to take advantage of their innate skills. This causes poverty, family violence, ignorance and a lot of frustration, not only on students themselves, but also on their families and communities. 

The proposed platform is addressed to vulnerable schools in Chile, especially rural ones, but then plans to expand throughout Latin America. According to PISA results (2015), all Latin American countries got a lower score than the OECD mean, and in Chile, 49% of 15-year-old Chilean students don't have basic skills to successfully unwind on the 21st century. 

Some contributing factors to the problem are lack of knowledge on innovative education, lack of interest from governments to invest in education, unequal educational access and demotivation in both teaching and learning. 

With this project, I intend to improve the lives of vulnerable children who don't have access to a good education system, in both urban and rural areas, but specifically those who live on isolated areas. I want to start with indigenous communities in Chile who live on the northern Andes (Quechua and Aymara people), and then expand to the rest of the country and continent. 

This would not only improve the children's lives, but also their families' and communities'. 

In order to design the platform and load it with innovative teaching ideas, we need to get to know the students, their culture, their way of living, their life goals, what makes them happy, their worries, their motivations, etc. That way, the activities are adapted to the reality of every community, strengthening their culture and traditions. 

This platform seeks to make learning fun and motivating, improving the education the children receive, granting them critical thinking, team work skills, empowerment, soft skills, development of their imagination and general life skills. Many of the activities would involve the students' families' attending to school some days and working together, which provides skills for the whole family. 

Activities can be shared on the platform.

In order to improve education in vulnerable communities, one has to work with the people involved, customizing contents, activities, teaching strategies, games, etc. This way, the people involved get empowered and become the designers of their own education. 

The platform offers a new educations paradigm, where students learn through creative activities, challenges and games, acquiring at the same time useful life skills. 

This is how the platform works: 

-Get to know every community, their culture, way of living, interests, motivations, etc. 

-Design different activities which adapt to every community's reality, working together with the people involved. Find ways, according to every reality, of including financial education, environmental education, everyday skills (cooking, sewing, changing tires, farming, etc), mindfulness, and their own native language, if they have one. Most activities would not require a monetary cost, and would be able to be accomplished by anyone. Also, some activities would involve the whole family. If children get homework, they would be in the form of challenges, experiments, games, and activities that children are interesting in. 

-Once the activities are designed, they would be uploaded to the platform and have a didactic manual on who to perform them, with videos and visual instructions. 

-The platform would have different categories, so students and teachers can browse depending on the subject (Math, English, Science, etc), on the type of activity (outdoors, family, experiments, nature, board games, etc), on the culture or context (Aymara, Quechua, Mapuche, Guarani, Maya, urban, rural, forest, mountain, beach), on the age group, and on other categories yet to be determined. 

-Teachers or students can upload their ideas to the platform. That way, it would also work as a social network where everyone can share their innovative ideas. These ideas would first be checked by us, and then located on the right category (the ones mentioned on the previous paragraph).

-On the platform, there would be a section where teachers and students can share their experience and achievements with the different activities they have performed.  

-We would check on every community periodically, to see how they're doing with the platform, if they have new ideas or concerns, etc. 

-This platform would take the form of a mobile app and an internet website. This way, these new educational ideas would be reachable for everyone, no matter the distance. With some profit, we would buy new devices to donate to schools which need them. 

I think my solution is innovative in the following ways:

-It offers a new education paradigm, where students get to learn by having fun, by performing activities that motivate them, instead of sitting on a chair and listen to a teacher all day.

-It offers new tools to teachers, who many times have good intentions but lack of resources to innovate and motivate their students. 

-The ideas are accessible to anyone who has an electronic device (we'll try to make sure every school has at least one), cutting off distance barriers.

-Besides innovative learning activities, we want to include the teaching of important life skills, such as financial education, soft skills, team work, creativity, among others (listed on the previous section).

-We work with the communities, we design the activities and programs according to their interests and needs, empowering them and making them the owners of their education.

-We involve the whole family in some activities.

-We work as a community of teachers and learners, where anyone can propose new ideas, complementing each other.

-We are adapted to different cultural contexts, such a different ethnicities. 

-Our platform is free, anyone can use it.

-Teachers don't have to pay to learn new teaching skills. Also, they don't have to travel long distances to take a course or training. 

Problem: poor education in Latin America and the Caribbean, resulting on vulnerable children and communities. 

Activities: New, innovative and creative learning ideas, which involve soft skills, imagination, team work, etc.

Output: A platform which provides innovative teaching methods. 

Short term outcomes: Motivation and interest in learning.

Medium term outcomes: Improvement on learning outcomes, growth in learning interest, acquirement of knowledge and new skills.

Long term outcomes/goal: Improvement on the educational system. Empowered students and teachers. Improvement in soft skills such as team work, creativity, critical thinking, etc. More empowered communities. 

1) We are not operating yet. We are still a "seed project".

2) We want to start with rural Aymara and Quechua communities who live on the Arica region, northern Chile. According to the 2017 Census, there were aprox. 500 children in school age living on rural Areas on this region. 

3) We want to expand to the Tarapaca and Antofagasta regions, where there are also rural Aymara and Quechua communities, especially on the Andes mountains. According to the census of 2017, there were aprox. 3,000 children in school age living on rural areas of these regions (including the Arica region).

The directly affected with this solution are the children in school age, and their families would be indirectly affected. 

My short term goals are to try my best to improve the education of vulnerable children, both in Chile and Latin America and the Caribbean in general. I want to start in Northern Chile with the indigenous communities that live there, then expand to the rest of the country and then to the rest of the continent. 

I have always thought that education is the bast of everything. With a good education, one can achieve whatever one wants, become empowered, and affect the ones around one in a positive way. That is why I think it's essential to find a new way of teaching, and the traditional methods are not very motivating nor efficient. 

If the children's education is improved, their lives will also be improved, as well as their families' and their communities'. 

That is why I want to make education fun and accessible to anyone, so no matter the students' social context, their location and isolation, I want all of them to have the same opportunities. 

Next year: I do not count with the financial resources to create the platform, to travel to different communities and work along them. Also, I do not have a lot of knowledge on IT, I would need someone to work with me to create the platform itself (the technical part).

Next five years: I would need financial resources to try to provide as many schools as possible with electronic devices, in order to be able to use the platform. I would also need resources to travel, every certain amount of time, to the different communities to check on them. 

Financial resources: getting sponsored. My family works with a shopping mall chain in Chile and with a bank, I would try to see if I could get sponsored by them. I could also ask for sponsorship from my university (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile). If this does not work, I would ask other companies for sponsorship. 

IT knowledge: Work with someone who has IT skills and knows how to create mobile apps, platforms and websites. 

In order to expand, I have to start small, and then, little by little, become bigger every time.  There are several school networks in Chile, so it would be easy to start working in new school. I have many contacts on the educational system in my country, different ONG's, etc. 

When it comes to expanding my idea into other countries, I would have to create new networks, talking to different social agents (teachers, authorities, local communities, people who work on education, ONG's, local governments, etc). My first language is Spanish, so I don't think I would have a problem in creating new networks. I would show them what we've achieved in Chile, what the platform is about, and how it could affect other communities. 

I would start with Bolivia and Peru, which have a relatively big Aymara and Quechua population.

I am aware that Chile, Latin America and the Caribbean are usually open to new ideas, when it comes to helping different communities, so I am sure that this new idea would be welcome most of the time. ONG's, local governments and other organizations are always welcoming new ideas, especially when they adapt to their own context, reality and culture. 

I am the only one working on this project so far. So far, I have developed my idea very well, but just the idea itself. 

I have done a lot of research about education, and even wrote my thesis about it. I have also traveled to Nordic Countries to see in person how their education system works, and know a few teachers who work there. 

I am currently working on a paper about education with a university professor, who also has a lot of experience in education subjects. 

I have worked for four years on a vulnerable school in my city (Santiago). 

I started with an after-school math club -which is part of a volunteering group called Convive -, where I started to explore fun ways of learning. Most students came from vulnerable backgrounds and knew little math (some 8th graders didn't even know how to multiply and divide), and were not interesting in learning, either, but when I started teaching them with fun games and activities, they got really, really motivated, and started to improve their grades. Also, I always made sure I was teaching them, along maths, team work and other life skills. 

Then I created the Kitchen Club, where students of the same school would learn math, science, Spanish, art, team work and other skills while cooking. This really motivated them into learning. 

Since then, I always try to adapt my teaching to fun activities. I still teach on that school and I am also a private math tutor. I've a long list of games. 

Last year I wrote my thesis on how the educational system in Chile transforms the Aymara children's culture, as Chile does not care about their ethnicity, therefore they don't include it on the curriculum. I was shocked when I visited the schools in the different Aymara communities, as they were learning the same things I learned in Santiago, and nothing about their culture. I could notice that many children behaved more like westerns than like Aymara. I got really concerned. 

My key beneficiaries are the children from vulnerable areas, starting with Aymara communities. 

I would provide a platform that grants a wide variety of learning activities, all fun, creative and motivating, and adapted to the reality of each community. 

To provide it, I would travel to different communities, get to know them, show them my project, teach them how to use it, and create new activities that adapt to their context and situation. If necessary, when I have enough financial resources (sponsorship), I would provide an electronic device to every school who needs one and cannot afford it. 

When starting, I would get sponsored by different companies, such as Mall Plaza and Banco de Chile, and maybe Universidad Católica de Chile. I would also receive donations.

On the mid and long term, I would invest the capital I have earned through the sponsorship (stock shares or other), and maybe, if time allows it, sell products or services. 

I would get advice from different financial advisors and specialists.