TAKMIL-Teach a Kid Make Individual Li

TAKMIL is an edtech-based gender inclusive solution that aims to change the landscape of  education model which incorporates the key components of digital learning (training, delivery, assessment, monitoring and  evaluation) into a portable, cost-effective, and scalable solution. The model has been tested in regions with the most challenging environment (no building, no electricity & limited internet) and have provided education to over 1500 children including 343 girls in 25 marginalized communities. We now aim to increase the number of girls in our schools by overcoming all the social, economical and cultural barriers and help them in achieving their dreams through education.

TAKMIL addresses the most challenging problem of access and quality of education in communities with no schools with concerted effort around empowering Pakistani girls who are exponentially impacted. 

Education, which is the fundamental human right and to which every child is entitled, has not received the due attention that it deserves in Pakistan. The country has the second highest number of out of school children in the world with 22.8 million children between 5 to 16 years of age; representing 44% of the total population in this age group. Among these the ratio of girls to boys is much higher. 32% of primary school age girls are out of school in Pakistan, compared to 21% of boys. Similarly, at middle level, 59% of girls are out of school, versus 49% of boys. Situation is much worse in the underprivileged, slums, war-affected, and rural communities of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan where communities lack basic facilities of life, let alone the infrastructure and resources for education. Parents are more concerned about feeding their daughters than educating them. Also, the social and cultural mindsets prevalent in these communities for centuries do not allow the girls to fulfill their dreams.

We offer a solution with community-based facilitators, locally-relevant content, and technological innovation in the form of cost effective, hand-held technology aimed at reinventing the role of the modern-day classroom and the role of the “teacher”. Our innovative education model caters the needs of OOSC while keeping the standard and quality of education at par with advances in educational paradigm. It consists of

ICT INTEGRATED LEARNING which is designed to enhance learning outcomes and digital skills among the children of diverse age groups in a short amount of time. The curriculum consists of 3 phases. The 1st phase covers primary education in 12 months, the 2nd phase covers middle school education in 18 months and lastly, in the 3rd phase the students have 3 options: 

1. Move to high school curriculum (Grades 9-12) 

2. Technical/vocational education 

3.  Computer coding. 

Every lesson is developed through the smart integration of video lessons curated and aligned with learning objectives. The lessons are then delivered through Raspberry Pi-embedded projectors and tablets powered by solar panels. 

DIGITAL ASSESSMENTS & MONITORING: TAKMIL evaluates the learning process of each child at regular intervals through a digital assessment application. Additionally, biometric verification and artificial intelligence are used to monitor all schools

We target  out of school children in the poorest communities in Pakistan with a special focus on the 49% out of school girls between the age of 5-15 years. 

Over generations these underprivileged children, especially girls, are locked out of the education system and trapped into poverty. The dreams of these children to “be someone” are shattered with flawed education systems and unequal opportunities. Low level of education has subjected these communities to various economic and social issues, including low income levels, child labor, child marriages, poverty, unemployment, societal crime, and poor quality of life.  The children could not be streamed into the formal education system due to different needs and different age groups. We address these social challenges with the help of our local community based facilitators who personally recruit these children by convincing their parents. Especially female facilitators are hired if the parents do not want to send their girls to schools run by male facilitators.  Moreover, our flexible timing system allows the children who work with their parents to also get education easily. Instead of providing them only basic literacy skills we equip them with latest digital skills also which increases their eagerness to learn more.

The Challenge and our solution are perfectly aligned as we aim to increase the level of learning among the girls and women by providing them basic education. Our solution has already produced significant results and now we aim to increase the number of girls in our schools which is our selected dimension. Apart from this, our unique model also covers the second dimension as we provide digital skills to our students along with literacy skills to empower enough to effectively keep up with the fast paced world. 

children but their solutions have few weakness which TAKMIL addresses as follows:  

Existing Solutions

Strength

Weakness

Our Solution’s Strength

Government Schools

Use of existing Infrastructure & System

Government Recognition

Not Applicable in regions with no schools

Lack of quality education system universally

Lack of ICT based Curriculum

100% applicability in regions with no school

The model is structured by combining education and technology. Technology is integrated in monitoring, and evaluation as well to ensure quality performance.  

Free Education Facilities

Free Education

Community Empowerment

Lack of Education Learning Model

Lack of Monitoring System

Limited to Specific Communities

We offer a unique model with a sound digitally built monitoring system applicable on a network of schools. 

Our schools can be established in diverse communities with different religion, culture, language, and

background.

ICT Based Solutions

Quality Education

Technology Use to improve performance

OOSC are not target audience in most cases

Mostly designed for Commercial Use

In most cases applicable in regions with internet and power (Remote areas not targeted)

Lack of balanced integration with curriculum

Not cost effective

Our primary target is the OOSC in Pakistan.

Primarily designed for non-commercial use, however, the model has potential to generate revenue commercially. 

TAKMIL harnesses the power of technology to improve curriculum implementation. 

1 year for primary education

1.5 years for grade 6-8

It is a highly cost effective offline model which requires renewable energy sources and does not depend on 24/7 internet and electricity.

This work is built on the similar work done by the educational researcher Professor Sugata Mitra’s in India.  Dr. Mitra’s foundational work was analyzed and further developed to meet the unique needs of TAKMIL’s project. Our model takes an eclectic approach conceived by integrating different parts of existing technology. For example, we used free cached digital contents then assembled a mobile lab for content delivery. This project’s monitoring, digital student assessments, student’s attendances using artificial intelligence, data analysis come together to form a cutting-edge educational system. Some parts of our ICT Learning kits were developed from scratch because a comparable product was not available for the project needs. TAKMIL’s model relies on modifying existing technology to best fit the constraints of providing education in remote and underprivileged communities.  The ICT Learning kit uses solar panels for energy therefore not reliant on traditional sources of electricity. The ICT Learning kits were developed so they can be used with and without internet access since we know that this may be a major constraint in remote regions of Pakistan.

TAMIL uses a mix of following software technologies for developing the system: Android, Apache, Raspberry Pi, Java Script, CodeIgniter , MySQL, PHP, High Charts, Python, Open CV, Laravel.

We are using the above mentioned technology in eight of our schools. Each school is provided with a raspberry Pi  device that contains all the information for that particular school including the assessments that should be performed and E-Learning material like videos for the students. 

The reason for choosing a raspberry device is that the device is energy efficient that can operate in 5- volts and 2.5 Ampere DC power. This can be easily generated using a small solar panel for the school. Raspberry pi devices serve multiple mobile devices at a time in school. Moreover it has enough power to perform facial recognition for authentication along with fingerprint scanning to keep the data that is being collected from the student’s assessment. The Raspberry Pi device in a school serves as a small cashing server that collects data until it can get a communication medium i.e. internet using which it can transmit data to the main cloud servers. Cloud server is responsible for maintaining data of the schools and performing analysis on them. Cloud server is also responsible for maintaining the curriculum and assessment controlling of every school. The interface of the school application is a mobile phone tablet (Android) that communicates with the local raspberry device for saving and receiving all of its data.

22.8 million young children in Pakistan between the age of 5 and 15, in the underprivileged communities do not have access to basic education due to a life of poverty in which they lack basic facilities let alone resources for education. They are confined to a life of labor among many other social problems like child mariages and child abuse. 

TAKMIL targets these out of school children and provides them basic literacy and digital skills in three phases through an innovative education model which contains all the key components of digital learning i.e, delivery, training, assessment and monitoring. Additionally,  communities are engaged in this process for sustainable and significant outcomes. TAKMIL aims to bring a change in the society by providing equal opportunities to all children; girls, boys or disabled children. Education will unleash the potential of the out of school children and will help them in bringing a change in their lives which will trickle down to a positive change in the whole community. 

We believe that if you are unable to change the whole world then you should at least try to change the world of even one person. In partnership with communities, we will continue to provide students with quality education, initiate life and technical skills programs, and assess student progress in high-need areas. Our long-term vision is that our ed-tech model will be available for governments and partners to adopt and scale incrementally beyond TAKMIL schools.

Currently we are serving 1128 students and 29 facilitators making a total number of 1157. 

In one year we plan to serve an additional number of 500 out of school young girls and 13 new facilitators along with the current number of people we are serving making a total of 1670

In five years, we plan to serve 2000 out of school young girls, 1000 out of school young boys and 60 new facilitators along with the current number of people we are serving making a total of 4217.

• Increase our Outreach: TAKMIL aims to establish schools in the remote areas of Sindh and Balochistan with the highest percentage of OOSC and provide quality education to an equal number of boys and girls.  

• Introducing Phase 2 and Phase 3 of our Model: Recently some of our students have moved to phase 2 i.e Grade 6-8 education in 18 months. We plan to take all our students to this Phase 2 and then to Phase 3. Phase 3 is under development and will be ready for implementation in 1 year. 

• Digital Assessment and Evaluation to be introduced in all of our schools within 5 years. 

• We also intend to initiate a digital based adult literacy program for the family members of our students especially mothers within the next 5 years. 

• We plan  to commercialize the TAKMIL Education Model by offering digital solutions to schools in the private and public sector to uplift their education quality. Currently the idea is in the prototype development stage. It is one of the key milestones in our growth plan which we are aiming to achieve. The revenue generated from TAKMIL Tech will ensure sustainability of TAKMIL Foundation as it will be used to provide free education to out of school children. 

• As we grow we want to grow right. For this, we intend to build our team correctly to ensure achievement of our goals. We intend to develop our team so that our people can grow as TAKMIL grows -- a mutually beneficial relationship.

Financial Barriers: We need a constant stream of funding for the accomplishment of our goals. 

Technical: Onsite Training of facilitators is a challenge due to various financial and time costs. It is also becomes difficult for the female facilitators to travel far. 

Cultural: The communities we serve are hard to impact due to cultural mindsets of the people. Although we are creating awareness in these communities, we need to go deeper now to make education possible for the other out of school children who are still chained in these customs especially girls. The dreams of these girls are shattered by their families by not allowing them to get their basic education right. This stereotypical mindset is one of the major barriers in girls' education. 

Marketing Strategies: At the moment, we face difficulty in letting the world know what TAKMIL is doing. We need to improve our marketing strategies to attract funders and other influential people who are passionate to bring a change in the society. 

Covid-19: It is a recent barrier that not only us but the entire world is facing. Although we have not stopped our learning process, we are still fearful that some of the students might drop out of the system due to lockdown and the health crisis we are all engulfed in.  

Financial: To overcome financial barriers we have planned to use our education product and services for commercial purposes. In this way we will be able to generate a  stream of revenue which can then financially sustain the education of out of school children. 

Technical: We are planning to transform our on-site training to an online training system to overcome financial and time costs. Our long term solution is to develop an online training platform accessible all over Pakistan at any time. 

Cultural: To overcome this barrier, our plan is to engage the community through our local community based facilitators directly in the education process through community awareness sessions. Through these we will make them understand the importance of girls’ education and how it can help them and their future generation to get out of the trap of poverty. We have given incentives to these people in the form establishing school straight in their communities and providing them free education in flexible timings. 

Marketing Strategies: Experts will be hired to overcome this barrier and to devise effective strategies to let the world know of TAKMIL’s contribution to education. 

Covid-19: We will ensure to bring all our students back to schools by staying in contact with them with the help of our community based facilitators. Currently, pur facilitators visit them at regular intervals while following Standard Operating Procedure strictly and deliver worksheets to the students.  

Total: 35

Full-Time: 2

Part Time: 33

Contractors: 0

Each member of the team is passionately working for changing the lives of out of school children. Below mentioned are the team members with their skills and experiences

• Founder & Program Director: Dr. Shahid Qamar (Clinical Research Specialist, University of Louisville) 

• Co-founder and Program Manager: Zainab Khan (Masters in Science with 3 years of nonprofit management experience). She looks forward to taking the mission of TAKMIL to a global scale.

• Program Coordinator: Maria Alam (Bachelor in Political Science). She has experience in PR and Communications for a private school and the United States Embassy in Islamabad. 

• Assistant Program Coordinator (Balochistan and FATA): Ruqia Mir (Bachelors in Education)

• Assistant Program Coordinator (KP): Nazia Noor (Masters in Mathematics)

• Assistant Program Coordinator (Punjab and Sindh): Shazia Sarwar (Masters in English)

  • 30 well-trained and qualified Facilitators

• Program Officer Academics : Ayesha Dilawar (Masters in IR). She has more than 5 years experience of teaching and has worked on different projects of capacity building of teachers in formal and non-formal schools through online training

• Program Officer R&D: Shanza Khalid (Masters in Economics). She has worked at various non-profit organizations and is currently working on several research projects of TAKMIL.

• Program Officer Human Resource: Seemab Masood 

• Program Officer Finance: Hafiz Abdul Hannan. Working with a lot of passion and dedication he oversees financial and other significant operational tasks. 

• Program Officer Technology: Usman Ahmad (Masters in Computer Sciences)

TAKMIL started collaborations with non-profits in Pakistan who has outreach but need ICT and literacy support to beneficiaries. These non-profits/organisations are:

1. Ranr'a Welfare Foundation, Peshawar, Pakistan (2 Years Collaboration Project).

2. Street Kids Funds, Multan, Pakistan (A Joint Collaboration of 6 Months)

3. Street School Mirpurkhas, Pakistan (An initiative by university students who wanted to educate street girls in Mirpurkghas, the collaboration started in 2020)

4. Madrassa Farooqiya School, Faisalabad (A collaboration with Madrassa to provide literacy of primary level along with religious education)

5. Kawish Welfare Foundation for project development and execution.

6. A grant was received from Learning Equality (Kolibri Hardware Grant Program) which is a Google supported project

7. TAKMIL has participated in Microsoft Hackathon 2018