Adolescent girls peer help desk

Problem: Girls in Ethiopia are held back by gender norms that teach girls to not to think for themselves but to defer to the males in their life. Schools in low-income countries are microcosms of the discriminatory norms that exist in society

Solution: Link rural girls to educated role models, and let them choose what they want to learn, when, where and at their own pace. This will empower girls to develop an inquisitive mind, even if they are not at school, and eventually challenge discriminatory norms. Includovate will create a ‘help desk’ model where girls can call up an Interactive Voice Response system to hear information or ask questions in their local language while a team of young female researchers monitor and respond.

Scalable: By combining empowering pedagogy with technology that is accessible to anyone with a simple mobile phone this project can work even in remote, conflict-prone locations.

Approximately 15 million girls are located in rural Ethiopia. School aged, remote girls struggle to attend school due to internal conflict, environmental conditions (like droughts requiring girls to spend hours collecting water rather than attending school), household chores, menstruation, poverty, and harmful traditional practices such as child marriage. A 2015 UNESCO report noted that the poorest girls will achieve universal primary completion 20 years after the poorest boys. While statistics in urban areas are improving, rural areas lag behind and the inequality gap is increasing.

Adolescent girls in Ethiopia are raised to marry young, be circumcised and subservient. This leads to a life of low self-esteem, drudgery and gender based violence. Women in Ethiopia work twice as many unpaid hours as men, face high rates of maternal mortality and low educational attainment.

A lack of education affects human development broadly and reduces life chances of girls. Improving the education system is necessary but it isn’t sufficient to solve such deeply discriminatory beliefs. By addressing a systemic challenge (girls disempowerment through the formal education system, mobility restrictions that reduce their networks and access to information), the benefits of this program will outlast the program funds

Includovate works to create a more equal society. Our solution aims to support those who are restricted by gender norms from asking questions publicly, or to their parents, or in school. It supports two of the United Nations SDGs, goal 4 and goal 5. By linking urban university graduates who are trained researchers with rural girls with little education, a peer-to-peer exchange will occur along with role modelling and a mentorship-type of relationship.

Through the IVR system, girls can continue to learn about issues of concern to them, wherever they are and at a time that is suitable to them. The project will begin in conflict prone areas and those known as child marriage hot spots. The initial research will assess some of the barrier’s girls face when attending a learning environment. This will then inform the initial curriculum design.

The self-paced action learning approach is adopted through the REFLECT methodology. The REFLECT process explores and analyses the causes of power inequalities and oppression. By using the IVR system, Includovate reduces the cost of reaching these girls. Similar methodologies have been successfully trialled in rural Ethiopia to increase the understanding of women’s realities, the benefits of equality and inclusion.

Our solution seeks to educate, reach and empower remote and disadvantaged girls. It can be modified as needed to adapt to the life learning needs of the girls themselves. The girls will set the curriculum and the pace of learning, in this way, the girls are not just engaged in developing the solution, they are a part of the solution from the beginning.

1.     Our process will start with a baseline review to assess the barriers girls face to completing their schooling.

2.     Girls will call up the number on any phone device and select the option they want from the pre-recorded list.

3.     The technology will record all the data on a secure database to be accessed by authorised people.

4.     Our staff will monitor the interactions and answers the questions and update information as needed.

5.     Includovate will draw upon the media and the Ministry of Education and of Women, Children and Youth to share details of the project and to disseminate its learning.  

6.     Quarterly knowledge products (policy briefs, guidelines, information sheets) will be produced from the IVR reports that help showcase what girls want to know and distributed via social media and to schools.

Includovate will support girls learning while addressing the social and discriminatory barriers they face. No matter what background they come from, or how early they marry or the language they speak, our technology platform will provide easy access for all targeted girls to continue learning about issues facing them. Our vision is to remove the discriminatory norms that block girls from reaching their full potential, and eventually expand to serve the billions of out of school girls worldwide through technology. 

Includovate has partnered with a company seeking to maximize the potential of ICTm impact. Viamo provides both technical solutions and advisory services. They focus on Human Centred Design (HCD). They ensure that the digital solutions recommended actively target beneficiaries through the most effective mobile strategies within each market, taking into account factors such as gender, literacy, smartphone penetration, connectivity, and more. Collaboration and co-creation are at the core of our work. Our guiding principle is to ensure stakeholders see a clear benefit of embracing appropriate digital solutions and digital strategies for their own objectives and goals. Viamo has had a presence in Ethiopia for 3 years and have implemented large and small scale projects, adjusting our IVR engagement strategies based on the populations we aim to serve. We are also the largest single IVR provider with offices in over 15 African countries, allowing us to take best practices across our programs and countries.

IVR involves the use of a human voice recording to ask survey questions. It is an old technology being used in a new way. Girls can call a toll free number and hear, in local language, menus where they can access education and livelihoods information or ask questions by pressing a number on the phone dial pad or by speaking their response into the phone’s microphone. These engagements are then automatically recorded using dial tone sensing technology or, in the case of a spoken response, the audio from the participant is captured as a recording and stored in a secure database. Needless to say that respondents are not charged for accepting the phone call and participating in the survey. This allows us to engage low literacy populations, people with only simple mobile phones, and those who do not have access to data.

Viamo owns and operates our global 3-2-1 Service, a multi-sectoral information service available in 18 countries. The service is similar to what will be built here, which allows people to call in and access information of interest. Currently the service has had over 8.8 million people access over 27 million messages on COVID in 2020 alone. 

Viamo is a technology partner to Creative Associates in Ethiopia on the READ II program. Within this program, Viamo is designing and deploying a mobile-based reading volunteer support system, building teacher training modules for remote learning, and will be supporting data collection and analysis.

The world Bank reduced the costs of surveying citizens by over 95% through Viamo's mobile surveys, vs. field data collection in 6 different countries in Africa and Asia.

Viamo delivered science curricula through voice and audio technology directly to students who could not attend school in Sierra Leone through the All Children Reading Prize. The program aimed to measure the efficacy of delivering basic education content via mobile measured through engagement rates and comprehension rates. Over 600 students enrolled in the 6-week interactive curriculum.

https://viamo.io/case-studies/classroom-palm-hand-lessons-via-mobile/

Approach

Activities

Outcome

Impact

Assumptions

‘nothing about us without us’

Consult and include girls in the curriculum design and in the data collection

Girls feel empowered to speak up and contribute their ideas

Decreased belief among girls that deferring to a man for all knowledge and decision making is an acceptable  survival strategy

Girls want to learn and be empowered. Kin and community will let girls raise their voices.

REFLECT methodology

Action, reflection, learn cycles and self- paced life learning curriculum

Girls understand the world around them (literacy writ large) and learn how to solve their own problems

Communities and kin begin to see girls as being knowledgeable and having value.

Girls have time to learn

Peer-learning

Help desk of young feminist researchers answer questions and empathise with the girls

Girls can identify role models and have greater aspirations

Girls have a great network to call upon for support, knowledge and confidence

Role modelling inspires girls to want bigger dreams/ambitions

IVR

Self-paced curriculum delivered as and when girls are able and ready to receive it

Girls learn by doing and in a supportive and encouraging environment.

Girls willingly use technology as a means to solve problems and source information

Girls are able to access a mobile phone frequently enough to keep the momentum and the learning.

Currently: 0

In 1 year: As much of the Ethiopian rural school aged girls as we can reach which could be up to 15 million.

In 5 years: dependent on the success of the pilot in Ethiopia and access to funding to achieve growth

There is no capacity limit with the software, and Includovate has many gender and education expert consultants that can be put onto the project if there is too much demand for our proposed six women team.

As the technology and proposed methodology have been used in Ethiopia, we are expecting a high level of traction from the community for this project.

Besides empowering the Ethiopian girls through easy access to information, we have the goal to improve the lives of their families, communities and Ethiopia overall. Educated females are able to find high paying jobs they are able to make more informed decisions about what it best for their families and contribute to the country’s economic growth overall.

Our goal is that the Ethiopian government recognises the value of our project and can offer permanent funding to support their rural populations which often lack resources. We plan to use the gender transformation data for further research publications which can increase the awareness of the issues and can be a source of advocacy for support for the program locally and globally.

Within 5 years we also hope that the project will have expanded to Ghana and Senegal where we have identified the potential for success of the program. Our technology partner also has offices there, making it easier for the technology platform to be created in those countries.

Our solution does contradict some cultural traditions, thus getting whole communities supportive of the platform will be a challenge. However, using our specific methodological approach, the change will be carefully supported by the girls and if further supported is needed in the wider community our team will address the most effective solution once the problem is identified.

We are confident that with our already established connection in the ministry along with clear data that shows a big impact the Ethiopian government with be onside with the project. They are also reviewing their current gender policy, making it an appropriate time to discuss long term education solutions for the rural girls.

Further funding will be needed in order to reach the growth stage, however, our team are always looking and apply for opportunities that can support our innovative ideas and solutions. Thus we do not feel it will be a challenge to receive further funding down the track.

5 members from Includovate's full time staff. 

With our technology partner, will provide someone to develop the platform, someone to train our help desk researchers on how to record and upload onto the platform and someone will also be in charge of the platform's maintenance and modifications as needed.

We have put together a team of young gender researchers to be a part of the help desk, to monitor the project and conduct the evaluations. The team leader will oversee the group and has over 16 years’ experience in gender and inclusion work with a PhD on social inclusion. There is also a social anthropologist, feminist economist, data analytics expert, and a law graduate with a women’s rights interest. Five out of six of the team are Ethiopian women that come from a range of backgrounds to provide a diverse team with varied professional experience to draw on. The team has experience on gender transformative change in Ethiopia for a Care project along with a current project to review the national women’s policy in Ethiopia for the ministry. This knowledge is very valuable and can be utilised in this project.

Includovate as a business, works on providing innovative solutions to combat inequality and has a team of local research assistants that can be drawn on if the platform starts to grow faster than expected.

We also have the support of the company providing the technology who have an office based in Ethiopia and can assist with transferring the collected data into a database that can be extracted as a resource for reports. They will also be available to amend or add elements to the platform as requested by the girls.

Includovate is working with Viamo to supply the technology and support for the platform. They are experienced and often partner with research institutions to reap the benefits of joining ideas. They will provide services at the beginning of the project and offer assistance as needed throughout the two year in Ethiopia.

Includovate is a research incubator and social enterprise that designs solutions for inequality and exclusion. We are a feminist organisation, female founded and owned. We deliver robust research on gender norms, social exclusion, disability, migration, inequality, youth and gender transformation. We conduct evaluations and build capacity for gender equality and social inclusion research and practice. We are also experienced in literature reviews and collecting ethically sound, robust data.

We believe that knowledge creation in developing countries needs to be locally led and involve people from low income countries in the design, data collection, analysis and publication. Our model involves pairing researchers form the global north to researchers from the global south for knowledge exchange. Includovate builds the capacity of local researchers to lead, publish and improve the quality of the research performed in low-income countries.

As a social enterprise, Includovate invests most of its profits into independent research and capacity building. We are self-sustaining as we use the funds from the consulting arm of the business to build the capacity of national researchers. Through our social licence model, Includovate Australia helps the Includovate Research Centre in Ethiopia to improve its research quality and practices and allows its researchers to gain international exposure.Via the process of ‘systems change’, we focus on complex issues that affect the poor and excluded. All our researchers have a CITI human subject ethics certificate.

We hope to win Solve's extra funding options ensure success in the pilot phase which will make further funding easier to go for. We can invest some of our profit into work like this and also plan to get the Ethiopian government on board for a more sustained approachW.

As still a relatively small organisation established in 2019, Includovate will really benefit from having access to the SOLVE community. The awareness and learnings will help the organisation at its current stage and also for future opportunities. 

On top of the knowledge the program will provide, the platform also needs funding to 'get the ball rolling' . With the necessary funding, comes more awareness and allows us to seek further investment from within and outside of the Solve community.

We currently submit a lot of tenders to the UN and being accepted to the Solve challenge will make us more competitive with this aspect of our business as well. 

We are an organisation that flourishes off our network and are always looking to expand this network and thus we were motivated to apply to Solve for all of the above reasons.

More than just funding, we could really benefit from knowing which avenues of funding to go for in order to use our time more efficiently rather than going for everything we come across. Having funding partnerships also allows us to see through our other innovative ideas that rarely come to fruition. 

When we get funding we often don't have much to spending on a solid marketing or media campaign thus would love to learn more about how to do this effectively and techniques to increase the project and our organisation as a whole's exposure to the right people and network.

Includovate is both a research institute and consultancy company. Thus we love collaborating with other organisations linking to either area. We often partner with universities to get access to researchers and experts in order to provide the best team when going for bids. Thus MIT faculty staff would be a very valuable start for us. Other Solve members and recipients of the challenge are great to add to our network as they can offer ideas and support for our future endeavours. As our focus in on vulnerability and gender, members with knowledge on these areas would be very beneficial for us to be connected. 

Our solution will be helped by having access to the latest research techniques and a supportive community who can share their challenges in order to help us overcome ours. 

We have created an innovative technology solution to help adolescent girls gain access to knowledge in order to empower them in their every day life and into their future. 

We are focused on working with the girls to make sure we are meeting their needs and creating a meaningful change in their understanding of the world around them. The solution is accessible to all girls with a telephone device, including disabled girls with accessible technology can also use the system. 

If successful at reviewing this prize, we would be able to easily expand our solution, and add in other supportive measure that can help the girls even further. This could include implementing a similar system to help change gender norms in parents as they are often a barrier to girls receiving education. Extra support could also be provided by having more in person contact if the girls express this to be of benefit for their learnings. Our main research team is located in Ethiopia thus can easily travel to the affected areas if save to do so, and run group discussions or event at school to encourage the software and promote gender equality. Our research team all have certification have completed trainings in order to work with children in a safe way.

Our solution can aid girl's learning in the STEM area. The system is accessible outside of school hours is help is needed with homework and girls can call up during school hours if they were not able to get to school on a certain day due issues like an unsafe road condition or a sick parent that requires caring. Modifications can be made to the platform very easily to provide generic as well as specific help to the girls, so long as they are requesting this information.