Learning how to learn at Self-Learning Spaces (Nooks)

Nooks are self-learning spaces created in under-served communities that teach “how to learn”, instead of a few generic skills, by enabling communities to creatively express, make, break, fail and explore. They bring the choice to those marginalised to self-identify and develop skills and opportunities they are interested in and need.

As the challenge rightly mentions, a single job or skill no longer lasts a lifetime. Education systems, that still develop a single skill over 15-20 years, fail to accommodate this. Coupled with an existing lack of access, those underserved look towards continuous cycles of marginalisation.

The question is - How can we teach how to learn, and make skills-development accessible? 

We create self-learning spaces called Nooks, where people from underserved sections of society can explore, identify and develop the skills they want, without fear of failure or need of money, leveraging the Internet and community help.

We have piloted 3 Nooks so far, 2 in Indian villages and the third in a refugee settlement in Uganda. All of these within under served communities, marginalised due to poverty, social-status or war. With over 300 learners, children, youth and older persons, we have seen Nooks being used as a space without judgement where learners attempt to try projects that require new skills originally absent from the community to start new enterprises that make shoes, earrings, aquaponics setups, art, dresses; or to get higher education or jobs of their own choosing in photography, visual design, etc.

We aim at creating 373 Nooks in 370 under served communities in the next five years, impacting 25000 individuals directly, and enabling them to develop skills of the 21st century.

Our general target audience is anyone who is marginalised due to income or society. More specifically, but not limited to, refugee camps, villages, gypsy communities, tribals, urban slums and communities displaced due to calamity.

Nooks will be partnered with small grassroots organisations and funding agencies, committed to support for a minimum period of three years, and initiated by the DEFY team, and managed/controlled by the community.

Year-wise incremental goals for creating new Nooks

Year-wise incremental goals for creating new Nooks

- 373 Nooks to be created in 5 years, with direct impact on 25000 individuals and 373 communities

The DEFY skills tracking framework will be used to record new projects and skills created continuously

- 75000 21st century skills to be created (3 per person on average), assuming a 1 year average attendance by each participant

Demographic participation data collected at each Nook with arrival of new batches.

- 50% non-male gender participation on average

Skills development has been an important agenda for many development agencies and governments. Yet the usual path taken is to pre-select a few skills and teach them to an under served population. While considerable short-term success can be with such approach, it also creates a large dependency on a small set of skills, that can easily wither away owing to changes in market or the enabling agencies.

We differ in two important ways -

1. Individuals develop those skills that they are interested in

2. They learn the process of developing skills, using which they may acquire new skills when current ones become outdated

Our innovation is not in high-tech technology, but in bottom-up design. Nooks are not created for a community, but rather they are created by communities with support from DEFY. Over the last three years, we have been able to create methodologies that allow us to enable the community to design their own learning space, based on the Nook framework. The community decides the tools, manages the funds, controls the operations and creates the rules of engagement. Our job is only in asking the right questions to the community, which we do during the induction process of a new Nook.

Nooks come into being when grassroots or developmental organisations/companies notice our work, and invite us to create Nooks in their local communities. We set up the Nook together with the community, incubate it for 8 months and then “step away” when the community can independently manage the Nook. We have received 25 requests so far.  

Nooks are extremely affordable, requiring about $10000(US) to set-up and $6000(US) for yearly operations. We seek a funding commitment from partnering organisation for a minimum of 3 years, post which the Nook may self sustain through enterprise, services or as a non-profit.

1. Service Delivery Model: The Nooks will be set up in partnership with organisations, corporates and community. Project DEFY will charge a service and project management fee.

2. Philanthropic Support: Project DEFY will continue its non-profit journey and seek support from small and large donors, institutions and companies to support projects.

3. Technology tools: We plan to build many assistive technology-tools to aid in the learning and skill-building process. Chief among them is the Self-assessment tool that has been designed and will be built into a software product. It would be the first of its kind that would enable assessment of learning without need for comparing with others. These tools will also be licensed to other organisation for use.

1. We believe there are many communities, organisations & companies who would be interested in creating Nooks. We must be able to create a good marketing strategy to be able to reach out to large numbers of them.

2. Many who approach us are grassroots workers without much funding. We must build capacity to help them and bring larger funders/donors to support new Nook projects.

3. We must be able to build our team in quality and quantity to realise our ambitious scale-up plans.

4. We must realise some of our data-collection frameworks as technology tools for efficiency at scale

https://www.facebook.com/ProjDEFY/

http://edtechnology.co.uk/Article/technology-instead-of-teachers

https://hundred.org/en/projects/design-education-for-yourself

Organisations like ours, that attempt a different angle at solving world problems, need what few allies it can get. Through SOLVE, we would like to get connected with other unconventional organisations, learn from their experiences and seek the support of the global community in our efforts. We look for funders, technologists, psychologists, software developers, community experts, business experts and frugal designers. We need mentors who have experience in scaling up and tackling the challenges that one faces while working with diverse communities.

And of course, we would share our learnings and experiences as well.

Global Humanitarian Lab (http://www.globalhumanitarianlab.org)

Kanthari (http://www.kanthari.org)

IDIN at MIT (D-Labs) (https://www.idin.org)

Social Innovation Academy (http://www.socialinnovationacademy.org)

School in the cloud

Agastya foundation