SWS Program

          We believe that chances to access technology, to attend in training workshops in their free time and to learn necessary skills to make money can change marginalized girls' life. They can get quality education through it. 

          There are many problems right now within the marginalized society. Women are not getting educated due to poverty or social illness which is indirectly caused by their low economic contribution in family. Technology based solutions aren't working due to unavailability. Insecurity, lack of workspace, inability to apply digital literacy, more economic value of money than learning materials, loop of illiteracy are contributing here too. 

          We aim to solve these by giving them chances to access technology, to attend in training workshops in their free time and to learn necessary skills to make money. And it is the time to apply it globally and change them also. Because conditions are more or less same everywhere. 

The problems we considered to be dealt are-

• Many women can't get formal or informal education for poverty, social illness or problems which are mainly caused by their lower economic contribution in the family.
• For insecurity issues, some of them can’t get out of the house for formal education. Distance learning is a myth for them as ICT devices and internet connections for getting education are not available to learn from home. 
• In rural areas, the limited workspace for women reduce the tendency to get educated. 
• Digital literacy programs are not working out as they don’t have equipment to apply that. Technology based solutions are also failing for less availability. 
• As the women literacy rate is not up to the mark, the girls are not getting a better perspective from their mother to understand themselves better. 
• As the value of money is greater than education or support for education or support towards employment, they also sell the supportive materials(from books, pens to sewing machines etc.) given by other organisations. 

          We believe that chances to access technology, to attend in training workshops in their free time and to learn necessary skills to make money can change marginalized girls' life. They can get quality education through it. 

          It can be done by long workshops. We will arrange workshops for providing skills and knowledge for free. Knowledge includes basic primary school education. Young women or elders will receive financial, business, entrepreneurial knowledge. Skills include works doable from home(sewing, crafting etc). Young women can attend later in business-concept contest and selected will be helped with venture capital, more training or technology- depending on their need. Classes will be held on afternoon for more participation.

          Modified Distance Learning process will be used in initial and second step’s skill learning where technological and learning materials will be provided by us. Materials won’t be given for free, rather those can be used for free in our local centers. Local centers will have computers and option for being digitally literate. After workshop, they will be realized the importance of being digitally literate and will be given chance to use computer and internet connection to learn and also start career. Our distance learning modules will help them.

        We are working to change the life of marginalized people through marginalized women and a part of our program ensures their enrollment in education. 

        Firstly, for knowing them better, some of us are living within a marginalized society even during the quarantine. Secondly, we are choosing executives also from various region. They are former member of a marginalized society and now living in town to change their condition. Our chosen executives from that region will know the condition and thinking processes of their region’s people and accordingly people will be persuaded to come and join. It may include food, publicity of contest with prize money after workshop, telecasting cartoons or movies and so on.

        The program will try its best to reduce the current problems as much as possible which is needed by them too. The girls can participate in their free time , in afternoon, which will be easier for them. Girls and women will get opportunity to change their life and will be told the importance of changing life and also will be persuaded to join to take the opportunity and reduce the problems for them themselves. 

         We work for poor peoples and they are marginalized in developing or undeveloped country. Even they can't get proper evaluation for their works too. The problems we are solving are the problems of poor and marginalized people. We want to bring on a change through marginalized women. 

         We are teaching through informal workshops. We also persuade people to join in this workshops and thus increasing participants in informal education. We mainly train skills to do something with economic value. We are also providing free internet and other technologies along with digital literacy for free on their need.

Reasons for being innovative-

•         There are a lots of organizations working on distance learning platform, but this actually don’t reach the marginalized people. We are trying to provide interested marginalized people these opportunities and also taking steps to making them interested.
•         There are few organizations who train skills. But they are not creating new jobs, they are rather increasing competition in the present job market, where people will suffer again. We are focusing on creating new jobs by themselves.
•         There are a lots of organizations who are providing materials to them for free. Materials include notebooks, pen, books, sewing machine, IT devices etc. But the value of money is higher than these skills for them and so they sell it for getting money. We are not providing them for free rather we are creating opportunities to use it for free.
•         As a hybrid of profit and non profit organization, we don’t rely completely on donations. We will get money from those small businesses, freelancers, digital marketing etc. to continue our work and get financial sustainability. We need donation in initial stage.
•         Very few organizations consider marginalized people’s high adaptability and use it for adult learners. By learning entrepreneurial skills, they can take upper hand of their situations in this volatile market.  
• There are very few steps to empower women with high contribution, to create entrepreneur, to connect them to technology, to help refugee within their condition. These all are important to solve the problems.

           Our program includes use of internet, audiovisual media for modified distance learning, crowd sourced materials for learning and for using learned skills, and any other technology based help depending on their model’s need.

          Distance learning is an existing idea and technology- but it is not possible now in the rural areas for lack of scope to use technology, when it is needed most. We will be creating scope to use internet and computer technologies for free to learn skills to those who are interested. Videos will be shown with multimedia projectors in the initial workshops by executives. Locally, we will build centers of SWS where marginalized women will get scope to use for free. Interested men can use too, but separately for security issues in these marginalized societies. Video contents will be created by recording our classes in first workshop.

          The materials that they will use to learn skills and earn money for themselves are mainly crowd sourced materials, they will use them in different shifts. After a time period, they will have money to move on to their bought materials.

         After initial workshop, young women will come up with their models which may require use of other technologies. We will try to connect them to those and make them skilled to use those technologies. We believe, if we can use these technologies among marginalized women and people, their problems will be met. 

Our program includes use of internet, audiovisual media for modified distance learning, crowd sourced materials for learning and for using learned skills, and any other technology-based help depending on their model’s need which are widely used and accepted technologies.

Distance learning is a quite familiar program now. It is created so that students can participate in classes without actually attending the class. They can learn from their home using internet. A lots of websites even provide free distance learning classes- like KhanAcademy, Engineer4Free, Expii etc. There are also some websites who provide aided learning modules for financially marginalized people. But the main problem for developing countries' low incoming people are: they don't have the chance to use internet. Distance learning is myth for them. We are just trying to create a way so that they can also participate. This will help them to use the audio visual media to enhance their skills in their field.

We apply the idea of crowd sourced materials in our daily life. Storage, electricity, internet and so many things use the idea of crowd sourced materials.

Basically, we are not creating technology. Rather, we are creating the path to use technology with is not present right now and we believe that it is more important than creating technology.

          Our main purpose here is to make marginalized women literate and for that we want to affect marginalized poor, low income or middle income women from rural or peri-urban area and their family. For achieving that goal, we are taking several strategies and tactics to overcome the current problems. 

  By applying our solution, high literacy and digital literacy rate can be gotten with the help of technology. Beside this, economic sustainability of marginalized people can be achieved as they are being skilled making money for their own. Local economic impulse can be happened. Increased workspace, quality education through distance learning, developed lifestyle, loop of exponential development and other such outcomes can also be gained within a short amount of time. 

          If the SWS program continues for a long time and continues to change the live of people, some additional long term outcomes can be gained. As women's low income indirectly causes gender inequality and related social problems, it can not eradicated till now. But as soon as they will start to contribute in their family, gender inequality will slowly vanish. As they can get more money without lessening the value of money, they won't live below poverty line and can get food for themselves too. A lots of organizations are coming up with technological solutions, but they don't work out that much because of the lack of technology. In future, this problem will be solved as they will be able to access to internet and change them. When marginalized people can also live with comfort without hampering the economically sustainable people, there will be an economical balance all over the world. And we believe, thus the world would be a better place to live on.

Presently, we are serving only 4 women.

In one year, if we get initial funding, we can arrange around 100
programs, get in touch of 8,000 family or 40,000 people
approximately.

Within 5 years, we can arrange around 800 programs, get in
touch of 90,000 family or 500,000 people approximately. 

        We will be mainly spreading our programs during the next five years. Spreading will automatically change the lives with the touch of technology and bring on economical and technological revolutions. We will try to establish the solution in our country and then to go beyond the country and apply it globally.

        It will change the lives of them- whom our solution serves as well as of them- who serve the solution. And our program will get impulse in an exponential factor- the more our solution serve, the more we will be educated, literate, skilled, economically sustainable and again we can serve solution to people more than previous, which will go in a loop and give and exponential increment.

        This exponential graph will reach its equilibrium automatically when marginalized people will no longer be marginalized. It's not necessarily because they will have more money, rather it is because they can compete with others, they are skilled as others. There will be a balance among people and it is our vision.

        We will be working along the next few years to fulfill this vision, to get what to aim, to reach our goal and to help marginalized people to reach their goal themselves. And this can make the world a better place.

There are several barriers for succeeding the program. Some of them are-

• Lack of Initial Impulse with Fund: We are progressing with our solution but it will take a huge amount of time without external funding as we are trying to provide access to use technology for free, access to quality education for free. We have to persuade people in order to join which will require resources too. Without fund, we have to start with own small capital in a local community and then after getting revenue from it, we can move on towards providing service in another area. Having an initial fund will help us to spread quickly and broadly which will work as a huge impulse.

• Lack of Reach: Huge international reach can bring on a lots of helping hands which is required to apply the program in their country and also to get help from them initially. For such program which needs initial funding, this reach helps a lot and we lack of outreach which is a current barrier for us. Outreach will not only help us financially but also will help us to get acceptance.

Our main barriers are lack of initial impulse with fund, reach- which can be solved by help of Solve community.

• Through Solve's prize funding and partnership opportunities, we might get a part of initial funding by which we can do our works quicker and broader than our current condition. Broadening will help you get revenue back to get financial sustainability quickly and quickening will add an impulse on getting financial sustainability.
• With Solve's prize funding, partnership opportunities and mentoring, we can increase our reach which will help us to remove our barrier. More reach can bring on more funding or help which will work as an impulse to program for making it quicker and broader. Also it will increase our acceptance, chances to apply globally, revenue, secondary clients or consumers and so on.

Without these, barriers can be removed with progressing slowly which is actually too slow and also will remain in a narrow range for a long time. These helps will work as catalysts. And that is why we are actually applying in Solve.

Presently,
Full time staffs: 5
Part time staffs: 10
Executive Members for various region : 7
Advisors: 2

• We choose executives from marginalized society, who lived there and now living out for running family or other reason. They know the way of their thinking, what strategy will be right for them and how to start the program in their area. Their experiences uniquely position our team to deliver the solution.

• Our team leaders have tried to apply the solution in narrow sphere, and it worked. We possess the experience of changing people's life.

• Beside this solution, team leaders previously arranged a lots of events, on their own or from their other organizations, to help marginalized people. This includes teaching, financial helping and so on. These skills and experiences also uniquely position our team to solve the problem.

Currently, we are not partnering with any organizations. But after starting our work, we might partner with SFS ( Service for Food Sustainability) who works in the same range of ours in a different way with a different goal. 

          Our targeted customers are marginalized women through whom we can change their family. And for being connected with them, our chosen executive from their society will be a bridge for us. They will take the responsibility of the prosperity of their society. For growing our customer, we will arrange workshop and establish local stations with the help of chosen executives. And for keeping our customers, we will keep contact with them through our executives.

          We will provide the chance of free access to any technologies, according to plan, they want when their plans got selected. Beside this, free internet and computer usage for women will be an open option. Selected will be helped by venture capitals and so more option. In order to serve this, we arrange workshops to train skills and teach knowledge and their arrange contest to select ideas after training workshops. And we will continue building training manuals too for their improvement. 

          We want to partner with international dealers to increase workspace, and also to get the consumer of the products made by our served people through dealers' help. Besides, all ventured projects of our program will remain a partner and perform some work on their locality on our behalf. We will accept help from local non profit organisations too. 

          Costs and revenue streams are stated in the model.  

Some of the ways through which we will gain financial-sustainability- 

• Ventured plans: After workshops, we will arrange business model contest and select potential business models from them. If they need capital to start, we will give them option to get venture capital. After every workshop, we might get around 80 plans and select 20+ potential plans from them. Profit of those company will generate revenue.
• Donation: We will be open for donations and helps. We will try to persuade- through our works- individuals, organizations and governments to donate. Also we will request our customer to donate after they get enough sustainability so that more people can get sustainability like them.
• Banking system: At first, people will use our supplied technologies if they want. But they can use it only in our office and for limited time. To work full time, they have to buy and we can manage discount for that. To buy, we will encourage them to store an amount of money regularly in our banking section, through which they can get interest too. Using the money stored in bank, they can buy technology after a while on their own and we can invest that money to our work to generate revenue. 
• Digital marketing: Our training modules might contain ads and it will be seen by a lots of our customers. 
• Low commission: When we get them customer or consumer for their product, we will charge a very little amount from their profit.

          We are applying to Solve because our program currently have some barriers, which can be overcame by the help of Solve. As mentioned earlier, our main barriers are lack of initial impulse with fund, reach, workspace and consumer. Solve's prize funding and partnership opportunities, mentoring or connecting programs have potentials to help us solving these problems.          

         Through Solve's prize funding and partnership opportunities, we might get a part of initial funding by which we can do our works quicker and broader than our current condition. Broadening will help you get revenue back to get financial sustainability quickly and quickening will add an impulse on getting financial sustainability. 

         With Solve's prize funding, partnership opportunities and mentoring, we can increase our reach which will help us to remove our barrier. More reach can bring on more funding or help which will work as an impulse to program for making it quicker and broader. Also it will increase our acceptance, chances to apply globally, revenue, secondary clients or consumers and so on.

         By Solve's mentoring or connecting programs, we will be able to find secondary clients, create workspace and remove our barriers. It will fulfill our SWS Program's vision. 

         Without these, barriers can be removed with progressing too slowly. Program will also remain in a narrow range for a long time. These helps will work as catalysts. 

That is why we decided to apply to Solve with hope for getting help to fulfill our visions and goals. 

We are applying to Solve to overcome our barriers like low initial fund, less reach and lack of workspace. Overcoming these will fasten our progress. 

We could reach international clients or secondary clients for our product creators and also can create long-lasting deals with them. Without help of Solve, it might be tough for us to get international reach and apply our solutions globally to millions of people and fulfill our vision. And we believe, Solve can help us on our way and also give an impulse to our journey to accelerate it quickly. 

  Any non-profit organizations that work in our targeted areas with similar goals can be our partner to help us. They can help us by working in some of our sub projects and Solve can help us for creating the bridge, specially in the cases of international organizations. 

       We want international clients with whom we can make deal and create new workspace for our marginalized women. Work can include sewing, designing, sculpturing and so on. We need clients for whatever our marginalized people are making. And as our targeted countries are so called developing countries, international clients can get their job done with a lower rate which still will bring a revolution in the marginalized people's local economy and change their life. And Solve can create bridge here too. 

We would also love to see international sponsors who can help us, like they cam give technologies at a lower cost so that our solution can be applied more fluently, in so many ways.

         We also have plan for applying our solution in refugee camps. Currently, there are Rohinga camps in Bangladesh and also near Chittagong. If their children don't get enough education or don't learn skills, they can't economically progress. 

         There are many organizations who are working on them. They are giving them food, notepads, pen and a lots of things. But to them- the economic value of money is more important than these things. So they sell them in the local market for money. And thus, the primary goals for developing them don't work.

         We are bringing on a new idea for doing this. The rules are they can get food daily if they bring on the notebooks and pen given and also if they do the whole class. During the class period, we might do some interesting activities- like showing movies, acting dramas- and so on. Also, we will use their local person to teach them rather than teaching on our own. We will find out the educated or semi-educated people from them and will train them how to teach and will also provide fees for taking classes. And we believe, this can have serious effect on their development. And thus we also think that we are qualified for this prize. 

         Afterwards, our program will use The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion for starting our good works quickly and broadly. 

        We believe that gender inequality and other related social problems are directly or indirectly happening by women's low economic contribution in family and that is why we also believe that women can raise their voices and achieve equality by increasing their economic contribution. In fact, for that we have started our program for empowering women by providing them the scope of using technology, which they lack most, for free and change their life. A part of our solution includes the use of modified distance learning, and another part includes making them skilled- to use any technology they want- to be succeed to change their life through their own entrepreneurial model. 

        There are a handsome amount of teams, building technology-based solution for women, which fail only due to the fact that the marginalized people don't know how to and don't have the access to use technology for their own good. We are trying to create a way and a platform through which they can reach technology and technology can reach them too. And this platform will help us to deliver our programs and also help others who are trying to achieve this development through innovative technology. As the goal of "Innovation for Women Prize" and our "SWS Program" converges, we think we qualify for this prize. 

        Afterwards, our program will use the "Innovation for Women Prize" for providing them the chance, to use technology for free to start changing the life of marginalized women, quickly and broadly. 

        We believe that rural marginalized people's high adaptability will allow them to gain skills quickly to create good jobs for themselves. For that, we try to enhance their knowledge at first, then ask them to create models for income, and afterwards we provide them with helps (like venture capitals, skills, marketing, consumer finding etc.) to run their model.

        In the last part of our program, we try to make an increment in their skills on their need. Skills include technological skills, linguistic skills, crafting or sewing skills and so more. By achieving these skills, they can start their own small businesses with their gained knowledge. They also can choose to compete in the present competitive market with their updated skill set. But whatever the market condition is, they can take the upper hand of their situations with their gained financial, entrepreneurial and business knowledge. And the end result is: they will know the quickest way to adapt themselves quickly in the changing marketplace and earn enough to improve their lifestyle. As these converge with the required goal of "The GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship", we think our program qualify for the prize. 

        Afterwards, our program will use "The GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship" to quickly and broadly spread the program and give the chance to marginalized people. They can get more venture capitals and crowd sourced resource for their betterment, for changing their life and for making world better place.

        The adults are a large part of our population and we believe that if adult can gain significant knowledge and skills, they can change the condition of their family and this is more true for marginalized people for their high adaptability. And on our path to change condition, we provide chance to use technology, literacy, digital literacy and so on.

        Our program initially arrange workshops for marginalized women which include basic primary education, financial, entrepreneurial and business knowledge. Though the main reason is to create small businesses with their entrepreneurial abilities, as a secondary outcome- adult literacy can also be achieved. And then we ask them to create sustainable models for their own business and finally we provide them with the helps they need. Helps include venture capitals, skill training, digital literacy for using technologies and so on depending on their need to fulfill their businesses for free. We will make marketplace for their products and also find consumers on behalf of them. Briefly, we will help them on every sphere they need for their betterment by themselves. And thus we think we qualify for "Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy".

        Afterwards, our program will use "Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy" to quickly and broadly spread the program and give the chance to marginalized people. They can get more venture capitals, technologies, learning content and crowd sourced resource for their betterment, for changing their life and for making the world a better place.