PROJECT SURMOUNT

• The basic challenge is how to bring the opportunities of modern and woman-focussed learning to the marginalised and underprivileged young girls and women of India, living in remote rural areas, at an affordable cost; and thereby how to improve their skill sets and employability, and thus give them a voice in the society.
• The Solution seeks to reach out to them through an online Portal, multilingual and interactive, carrying contextual and contemporary content, to be serviced through the network of rural online service providers. The Solution also aims to engage offline with the stakeholders in this eco-system, such as the student community, the community of their mothers, educators, school chains, rural online service networks and potential employers.
• The Solution will not only impact their lives individually by improving their knowledge, skillsets and employability, but will also empower them to be Agents of positive Change in the society.

Presently in India, there are about 657 million women (48% of the population), of which 68.8% live in rural areas. Of these again, 70% are farmers, of which about 82% belong to the marginal category. 43% of them are between the ages of 5 & 25. All in all, around 110 million marginalised young womenfolk in rural India form the broad target audience for this Project. Their problem set is laid out as under:

1. Regressive society and feudal practices – Puberty shaming (God’s curse of uncleanliness), Purdah system (women’s seclusion), Illiterate parents, Child marriage, Dowry (bride price), etc. All these de-prioritise the urgency of girl child’s education.
2. Impact of poverty on education – Large family sizes and extreme poverty force the girls to be pulled out of school and engage in menial labour to boost family income, and also to suffer poor health and hygiene.
3. Lack of modern infrastructure in underfunded schools of rural India. Poor reach and connectivity, both physical (transport) and virtual (internet).
4. Lack of progressive academic ecosystem and lack of motivation and incentivisation for girls’ education - Archaic and generic curricula, few women-centric modules; not enough policy initiatives by regulatory institutions; scarcity of lady educators.

Solution overview:

1. A “Holistic Learning” Portal, free of charge for underprivileged users. Salient features:
   1. Aggregator of different stakeholders, such as student community,educator community, mothers’ community, school-chain, rural online service provider network, etc.
   2. Interactive Portal, through Query-response and ChatBot
   3. Multilingual, to cater to different linguistic communities
   4. Content is contextual and contemporary, including women-focussed modules such as hygiene and health, laws, self-defence, vocations, etc.
2. Last-mile rural outreach, by tying up with online mega-network service providers, such as the “Common Service Centre” (CSC), which has been established by the Govt. of India on a PPP model. There are at present upwards of 100000 CSCs, catering to around 640000 villages, in a 1:6 honeycomb structure.
3. Mothers’ community connect, to improve domestic learning environment and social acceptability.
4. Employment opportunities integrated in the Portal.

What does it do?

• The Solution seeks to tackle the learning deficit amongst the target audience holistically, by addressing both the academic and vocational imperatives of the individual, as well as the improvements required in the familial and social environment.

Processes and Technology:

• Portal design through Adobe XD, Portal development through MERN stack, ChatBot through Python, Integration with Payment Gateway, web-security tools  using Linux, etc.

• The target beneficiaries are the socially underprivileged and economically disadvantaged girls and womenfolk of rural India. They do not have access to modern learning opportunities and the community benefits that flow from advancement of knowledge, such as in health and hygiene, sanitation, legal support, employment capabilities, etc. They are thus deprived of economic freedom and a voice in the society. 
• The spectrum of needs confronting the young womenfolk of rural India have been the subject of many studies and research work, both by the Government as well as non-government agencies. The SURMOUNT team has studied many of the research findings, and has also interacted and validated the same with representative actors in this eco-system such as rural girl students, their mothers and educators. Finally the need bucket has been optimised for priorities and interdependencies to develop an implementable solution.
• The Solution aims to enhance the academic knowledge as well as vocational skillup of the target audience to improve their employability and avail of the employment opportunities logged in the Portal. In the long run, the young womenfolk will find their voice in society and be Agents of Change to accelerate progress in their communities.

• The Challenge to deliver scientific and woman-focussed learning opportunities to the disadvantaged and underprivileged young womenfolk, at remote rural locations of India in a cost-effective manner, is addressed by the “SURMOUNT” Solution. 
• The Solution aligns itself to the Challenge in the chosen dimension by last-mile reach to the largest number of such disadvantaged girls through the online medium, to build up their value and employability through multilayered learning.
• The Solution addresses the overall problem at two levels, to enhance knowledge, capabilities and skillsets of the individual, and to improve the academic environment of the society at large.

Most of the other knowledge delivery solutions concentrate only on supply of information and knowledge in packaged capsules; they are mere Knowledge Portals. They target the individual student in isolation, with the limited purpose of making them fit to pass a defined syllabus. These solutions work within a very narrow range, only aiming at a pre-fixed syllabus. 

The other basic shortcoming in  most commercially designed Education Solutions is that they are generic in content, across categories of students and cross sections of society. Any subject will carry the same content, and there is generally no segmental prioritization such as for girls students or underprivileged students.

The Innovation in this Solution (Project SURMOUNT) is its holistic approach to the defined Challenge, by targeting at two levels:

• To improve the individual knowledge, skillset and employability.

  • The USP in this level is that this Solution does not stop at providing the learning and skill; it goes further to a tie-up tab for rural employment opportunities, which will be symbiotic for both the employer and the employee.

• To improve the education eco-system in the society by empowering large numbers of girls and young women, giving them a voice to confront regressive social  practices and making them Agents of Change for the community.

  • The USP here is to engage the community of mothers of the students, to improve the domestic academic environment, create a support structure at home, and improve the possibilities of social acceptability.

The core technology, i.e. the central hub of the Project SURMOUNT is a Web Application, that has the longest outreach, the easiest access, the most contemporary and contextual content, the easiest interactive facility, the greatest flexibility and scalability, and all this at the minimum cost. 

Using the MERN stack, we look at creating a simple web app which is highly functional. The Portal and the databases will be hosted on cloud servers such as Amazon (AWS) or Hostgator. We also will release a mobile and a tablet version of this web app. Our technology team will ensure a 24*7 debugged and glitch-free running Application. 

We will filter the content to be women-focussed and always uptodate. Our Content Resource team will be dedicated to the regular updation and improvement of the learning content.

Some of the user-friendly technology aspects of the web-App are:

• A minimal navigation system.
• Multilingual, to cater to different linguistic communities
• Aggregator of different stakeholders, such as student community,educator community, mothers’ community, school-chain, rural online service provider network, local employers, etc.
• Registration facility for students and other stakeholders separately, which will give them deep access and many more specific benefits. 
• Geo-locating feature to connect local employer and employee automatically.
• A Query-Response and live ChatBot feature, where a front-end team will provide instant help to the registered users.
• A Payment Gateway integration.
• Standard Portal tabs and features like “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “FAQ”, “Dashboard”, “Gallery”, “Search”, “Disclaimer” “Privacy”, “Disclosure” "QuickLinks", etc.

The SURMOUNT Solution system is still in the prototype stage. So currently, there is no working evidence for this particular solution as such. But technology-wise, there are many similar commercial solutions available in the public domain, which have been built on similar technology stack, and function smoothly.

Our solution framework works as more than just a knowledge delivery system, where the uniqueness lies in a 360-degree learning and skilling of the young womenfolk in rural India, which leads to their economic upliftment and makes them Change Agents for their society. 

Our core learning modules will be chosen through grounds-up interaction and take inputs from the most qualified sources. We will be working with all the educators, stakeholders and influencers in the rural manscape for a holistic improvement programme. We will tie up with rural service producer networks and NGOs who have physical presence at the last mile. 

The immediate results of this initiative would be the emergence of a more knowledgeable, more aware, more skilled and more prepared women-force in the rural space. Their economic situation would start improving, and along with this, their health indices as well as their living standards.

As more and more girls benefit from this system, the momentum for social change will be accelerated, and that would in turn attract more girls to this platform of change. Thus, a positive change in the society would flow from this initiative in the mid-term, say in 3 to 5 years. 

The long term benefits will flow from the continued spread of this SURMOUNT initiative. 

As womenfolk, who constitute about 48% of the population of the country, gradually get empowered, they will be able to lend their voices to the programs of change in the country and thus participate in nation building. Women are the mainstay of the family unit, which are the building blocks of the society and the nation. Their awareness of the laws of justice and equality, their natural propensity for human care and social harmony, would gradually steer the nation on a more progressive path, and thus improve the developmental indices of the nation.

Our model is still in the prototype stage, hence evidence is at a minimum as of now. But data is being collected as we write these answers, e.g.: 

https://www.iimidr.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/Womens-Education-in-India-A-Situational-Analysis.pdf

https://www.iimidr.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/Womens-Education-in-India-A-Situational-Analysis.pdfwww.womensweb.in/2015/10/women...

Currently the Solution is at a prototype stage, hence there is zero engagement with the target audience. The expected figures at the end of the first and the second year would be 5000 and 100000. By the fifth year, the enrolment may touch 1 million.

A project of this scope and scale, aimed at bringing change not only to the individual, but also to  the society, has necessarily to be planned deep and has a gestation period. 

The first step of the Project will be to lay the foundation for a long-term field-level engagement. It will see the development of the Portal and content creation. 

The second step, co-terminus with the first, will be to tie-up with the rural online service providers, and integrate the two portals. This is a matter of a business model with a parallel marketing outreach to all stakeholders and appropriate training to the field level personnel. 

Finally, the Portal can be fired in the public domain, and the engagement can begin.

Considering the preparatory imperatives, the first year may just see the beginnings of fruition, and a target outreach to 5000 (across 10 states) appears achievable.

The Solution is expected to pick up momentum as we go along, and the second year achievement may increase exponentially to 100000. This same momentum may see an enrolment touching 1 million by the end of the fifth year, especially if we can spread out to the neighbouring countries.

The Challenge defined and the Solution designed are transformational for the rural Indian girls and the rural Indian society. The number of disadvantaged girls and young women between the age brackets of 5 & 25  living in rural India is estimated to be around 110 million.

A Project on so vast a canvas would be aspirational in the least. Accordingly, the aspirational goals set for the first full year of implementation (actually the second year for the Project) and the fifth year would be approximately a hundred thousand (100,000) and a million (1000,000) individuals. 

The achievement of such an ambitious goal would have to involve multiple handholders, such as NGOs engaged in the rural space of India, rural service providers, government institutions and schools working in the rural space, etc. The participation of the Solve community may be explored. The coordination and supervision at the apex level can be done centrally.

The broad roadblocks to the take-off and long-term success of the Project would be:

Financial - The Project being non-profit, shall require funding or angel donations to sustain. The major areas of expenditure are:

• Technology funding for development and maintenance of the tech infrastructure and peripherals;

• Investment in essential technolgies on most cost-effective revenue models;

• Content cost including curriculum design, documents, demo-tools, etc.;

• Pay and allowances for the full-time team;

• Incentivisation for contract staff and associates;

• Revenue stream for tie-up with rural service providers;

• Expenses on spreading awareness and publicity;

• Administrative and management expenses.

Technical - Specific domain knowledge for the specific technology piece; integration incompatibilities between two disparate systems; tech obsolescence; scale-up limitations, etc.

Legal - Tie-ups with rural service providers at their apex level, content copyright issues, etc.

Cultural - Regressive social traditions and practices offering resistance to change in the education system.

Market - Dependence on the rural stakeholders for last-mile service and support, which may trigger a commercial exploitation of the delicate situation.

Financial - "Challenge" award prize money to start off, followed by angel funding for mid-term sustenance. With the spread of awareness and popularity, many other stakeholders like the schools, the rural employers, and even rural-level government agencies and administrative institutions will find value and reap  harvest from the Project.  Thus the Project may become self-sustaining in the long run.

Technical - A dedicated team, expert and experienced in the identified technologies and processes will be onboarded. Surya Ghosh is himself a practitioner of Computer Applications. The Managing Partner of “Answers N Solutions” has been the Technology Head of a government sector organisation, handling large rural based pan-India InfoTech projects of similar nature. 

Legal - All legal matters will have priority to be tied up preemptively, by taking advice and guidance of legal practitioners.

Cultural - The Solution itself has recognised the deeper challenge of regressive rural traditions and resistance to change in respect of the underprivileged girl population; and will overcome it by engaging with the progressive elements of the rural space like the school chains and the educator community. It has also envisaged the unique plan to tie up with the community of mothers of the enrolled girl students, who would provide determined support in the domestic education environment and improve the social acceptability of their daughters.

Market - The Solution includes a field correspondent team who would monitor and supervise the functioning of the rural service providers on a sustained basis.

Project SURMOUNT has been undertaken by the Management Consultancy Firm, “Answers N Solutions”, whose core team in the first year will constitute (mostly full-time):

Backend:

• 1 UX designer for Portal, mobile and other interfaces;
• Tech team of 3 for Portal, Server & Database development, debugging and management;
• Content & Resource team of 3, for content research and creation.

Frontend:

• Service  resource team of 4, for interactive service and support.

Field correspondent team of 10, for ground-level connect in 5 states.

Central supervisory team of 3 for project development, coordination and management.

Other stakeholders will be engaged on contractual basis.

Project SURMOUNT has been undertaken by “Answers N Solutions”, which is a duly constituted Partnership Firm in India, and registered under the relevant authorities. The Firm offers Management Consultancy services and has the mandate to take up Project planning and execution assignments. Surya Ghosh is the Principal Partner of the Firm.

The Managing Partner of “Answers N Solutions” is a vastly experienced expert in the rural Indian space, having worked in a senior position with a Govt. of India undertaking for 33 years. His core work in the organisation involved engaging with the farmers of the country, who number around 140 million, of which around 82% belong to the “small and marginal” category. However, the total population dependent directly  or indirectly on agriculture for livelihood is around 520 million, and their womenfolk constitute the target audience of the Project.

He was also the Technology head of his organisation, tasked with a similar challenge of connecting with the last-mile farmer through enabling technology, and imparting services online. His long relationship with the rural level service providers, as well as his knowledge of the local administrative hierarchy will be necessary in the implementation of this Project.

The Firm is also engaging with domain experts, educators and rural service providers, whose combined knowledge and experience of more than 6 decades will add to the overall expertise to carry out such a transformatory Project.

Till now, we have not yet tied up a formal partnership with any organisation. 

But we are poised to tie up with a few well experienced pan-India rural service provider networks, primarily those on a public-private-parrtnership model. Chief among them would be the “Common Service Centre” (CSC) network, which are set up in a honeycomb ratio of 1:6 whereby 1 Centre serves a maximum of 6 villages. Actually today, there already exist more than 250000 CSCs to cater to around 6,50,000 villages of the country. The CSCs provide not only online services such as e-classes, but also offline services through their employees living locally.

There are many other NGOs and philanthropic organisations in the rural space, such as SOS villages, who work with marginalised sections of the society, whose can be partnered with for extending the outreach.

The business model of PROJECT SURMOUNT would be to provide the value of learning and self-improvement opportunity to the marginalised girls and young women, and in the long run to generate sufficient revenue from the value-added services to make the Project self sustaining.

The target population of economically weak and socially marginalised girls in the rural areas of India, would not be able to pay for availing the opportunities offered by the Project. But the services of learning and skill enhancement made available to them through the Project are sorely needed for improving their employability and  living standards. However, there could be revenue models for discounted mass enrolments by a school for its students.

One of the biggest (but intangible) value which the students would get from this initiative is their preparedness to participate in the society, with the support of the relevant segments of the community in a structured manner. This social upliftment will bring with it many peripheral benefits such as better healthcare, hygiene and sanitation facilities.

Over a period of time, the other value added offerings, such as Advance modules of learning, Recruitment fees, Data-sharing charges, etc. would start generating revenue for the Project. As the momentum of enrollment picks up, the revenues would rise to offset the expenses being incurred, and thus make the Project self-reliant in the long run.

A transformational Project such as SURMOUNT, which seeks to impact the economically disadvantaged and socially marginalised girls and womenfolk in the rural space of India, has necessarily to start with a philanthropic funding model. Looking at this imperative, the Solution has been designed as a 360-degree value proposition (from learning to employability to social change agent), but at a minimum cost.

To start with, for the developmental and implementation stage, the "Challenge" award may provide the seed money. The first year budget has been estimated at around $183,800. The first year envisages a substantial capital or one-time investment in terms of development of portals and applications, procurement of technologies and cloud infrastructure, tie-ups with rural service providers, content development, etc.

From the second year onward, the one-time expenses will reduce, but the revenue spends would increase with increased enrollment, though per-capita cost comes down. At the same time, revenue generating models such as priced enrollment for Advanced learning, charges for recruitment, data-sharing with agencies, etc. are expected to narrow the income-outgo gap. However, during this phase, donations and grants will be necessary to sustain the initiative and drive it gradually towards self-reliance.

In the long run, say in 5 to 10 years, as the Project gathers momentum, a large number of enrollments are expected to happen, not only in India but replicated in other countries. Due to the economies of scale, the revenue inflow will overtake the outflow, and the Solution would stabilise to a self-sustaining model.

Project SURMOUNT is a philanthropic project with a social transformational sweep. Such a Project, on so vast a scale, cannot be modelled on purely commercial terms, and Angel Funding and Grants are imperative for their ultimate success. Apart from funds and resources to run the Project, there are many other requirements which need to be stitched together to achieve success in this vast initiative. For example, the right technical resources and domain experts are required to be engaged for the essential functions, experienced educators need to be onboarded for relevant learning content and inputs, legal and other administrative advice need to be obtained, and  guidance is welcome on strategies to penetrate the rural eco-system. 

The Solve Community carries with it a prestige and recognition beyond compare, which itself will go a long way in creating confidence in the donor community. A stamp of approval by Solve, by means of its Prize, will cross many a barrier in the quest for angel funding. The Solve community also has a great many domain experts and subject-matter specialists, whose mentoring would be invaluable in setting up the Project. 

Apart from the tangible benefits, the Solve platform offers many intangible but nevertheless significant value additions, such as its status to attract the best resources at the local level, and its reputation to attract motivated stakeholders to participate in this aspirational initiative. 

The team working on the implementation of Project SURMOUNT will naturally focus on its core actionables. But there are many peripheral activities, which are not its core areas of expertise, and hence the SURMOUNT team would certainly need handholding and mentoring in these areas. These could be in the areas of Legal, Accounting, Marketing, Publicity, and other such.

There are also the matters of soliciting support for the Project from reputable persons and institutions, those who are influencers and leaders in their respective fields. It would need the image and status of the Solve community to instill confidence in them and attract their support, be it financial or otherwise.

Hence, SOLVE is the One-stop Mentoring and Support community on which Project SURMOUNT would rely for its long-term success.

Project SURMOUNT is a collaborative initiative, and only by partnering with similar organisations or individuals can it see success at the end of the day.

Advice and mentoring is required in many areas, for which relevant organisations can be approached. 

Technology is at the core of the Solution, for which the MIT faculty or alumni group could provide guidance. This needs to be a fairly continuous process, at least till the Solution settles down adequately.

Corporates and philanthropic organisations are very essential for angel funding of the Project, and also to co-own the Project, and advise us for course correction as we go along.

The SOLVE community, with its roster of experts in diverse subjects, will be approached to mentor and handhold us in all aspects of the implementation, be it in content improvement, or in the supervision and management of the Project as a whole.

The solution stack of Project SURMOUNT is centered around a holistic Portal of Learning, supplemented by an aggregation of relevant stakeholders such as the school chain, educator community, the Mothers’ community, employer community etc. This core Portal will be integrated with all satellite portals (like that of the rural online service providers) and support facilities such as the payment gateway. Moreover the Sourmount Portal will be interactive at many levels to connect with the students and give them a measure of comfort and confidence.

The target audience of girls and young women of rural India are so economically disadvantaged and socially marginalised that the technology platform of the Portal is the only possible medium to access them instantly at the remotest location, that too at a very minimal cost. Further, it is a single unified platform to bring together all the partners in this progress.

With the help of the technology stack, the project seeks to empower the target population not only by imparting Learning and skill sets to improve their employability, but also by enhancing their social awareness so as to transform them into Agents of Change. 

Thus the Project SURMOUNT addresses the core vision of the "Innovation For Women", and seeks to achieve its goal through deployment of technology.

Project SURMOUNT is a transformational initiative at a global level (however, its starting footprint will be in India). The scale of the initiative stems from the scale of its demography, and the universality of its problem. The world over, even as in India, the economically depressed women population is always very vulnerable to oppression and suppression. Innumerable footprints of history are witness to women being the first victims of calamities, catastrophes, and events of manmade violence. 

The helplessness of women is increased because of their unpreparedness in  society and community. The first and foremost empowerment in the fight against injustice and economic disadvantage is education, and traditionally in regressive societies, women have been the last priority in entering the portals of Learning. 

Project SURMOUNT has been designed to be the single-window aggregated solution, to tackle this challenge headlong. Obviously, looking to the global scale of the challenge, a vast level of funding is required for the Project to make a significant impact.