Open Content for Development (OC4D)

The greatest factor limiting good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship is illiteracy. Today, 781 million illiterate adults--mostly women in Africa and Asia--face educational barriers that hamper entrepreneurship. 

Increasingly, new tech tools enable rural access to opportunity through OER (open educational resources). Localizable ICT tools increasingly improve to serve lower-literate learners on the fringe.

OC4D fills a specific niche by opening access to localized OER for lower-literate entrepreneurs in rural communities by a 3-pronged approach: 

1. OER Portal: Digitized multilingual content curated for rural, inclusive entrepreneurship, particularly for lower-literates; 

2. Localized ICT Centers: Solar panels, electricity, internet, computers localized user-friendly interfaces;

3. Facilitator Mentoring for Local Youth: “Village Ambassadors” lead participatory discussions, localize content, mobilize problem-solving.

OC4D fills the paucity of access to entrepreneurial-education through tailored tech and curated content in youth-managed community centers. If scaled, OC4D will unlock the power of OER in unprecedented ways, thereby increasing  literacy, job creation & entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial advantage is hampered and poverty exacerbated in rural developing countries because of a paucity of educational opportunities and limited access to information. Congruent with this disparity, the rich-poor gap widens while another gap emerges: the elite with access to ICT and the poor without it.

In this post-Covid world,ICTs offer the best tech-driven solutions for education & entrepreneurship; yet they are denied to those in developing countries who need them most. How do we build capacity to share ed-tech with hardest-to-reach learners? How do we support low-tech communities to access such tools?

MIT is a forerunner in sharing open-educational-resources (OER) via OpenCourseWare (OCW). Other groups followed suit; OER now revolutionize higher-ed arenas. Lauded as a “satisfying drink...to quench [one’s] thirst,” OER tools rarely reach bottom-of-the pyramid users and aren't consumable by the “most thirsty” sector of the world's 781 million illiterate adults in non-formal sectors of Asia & Africa.

How can ICT support would-be entrepreneurs and empower disenfranchised groups? How do we increase access to knowledge that is available for free but inaccessible to those who need it most? How do we localize content & delivery mechanisms in order to maximize benefit for fringe peoples?

OC4D is a digital education portal that unlocks the power of OER for underserved and lower-literate communities where poverty is rife.

OC4D bridges access to educational & entrepreneurial materials through improved tech-smart community centers and locally trained youth facilitators who are empowered to search, localize & disseminate educational content.

OC4D's specific niche is opening access to localizable, multilingual OER focused on business & self-reliance. Lower-literate entrepreneurs benefit by a 3-pronged approach: 

1. OER Portal
   Digitized multilingual literacy tools curated for entrepreneurship and self reliance programs delivered through local partners. Content is tagged for search by region/language/topic (micro-enterprise, budgeting, savings) via online user-friendly website/app.

2. ICT Centers
   Partner hubs in rural community centers and/or existing structures made available for community technological education, minimally including: internet & computer to enable access to online content tools. A pre-loaded content-hard-drive & simple solar panel/onsite battery may be used offline during load-shedding.

3. Facilitator Training for Local Youth (“Village Ambassadors)”
   Defined as ages 12-35, youth lead out in communities due to their natural interest in ICT & their adaptability to new technologies. OC4D's power lies in the mentoring & deputizing of youth to lead participatory discussions, search & localize content, and mobilize intergenerational learning groups for interdisciplinary problem-solving.

OC4D is focused on bottom-of-the-pyramid entrepreneurs (particularly women) in lower-literate and vulnerable communities of Africa & Asia.

This project aims to connect the dots between the powerful concept of Open Educational Resources (OER)--which have proved effective for higher-ed stakeholders--and a broader range of learners in new and multilingual contexts for ICT education, digital literacy, and better opportunities on the fringes of society.

OC4D addresses underprivileged populations facing educational barriers due to rugged terrain, weak infrastructure, and corrupt government. These forces have historically left rural people suffering from delayed dissemination of life-saving information.

OC4D involves vulnerable populations tempted by rural to urban migration for work/education by offering a new, local connection point to global information/training & entrepreneurial opportunities. 

OC4D supports indigenous and first-native communities by mitigating against loss of cultural heritage by connecting youth as mentors to and as liaisons with their elders/families.

OC4D responds to vulnerable groups by facilitating access to critical information, thereby increasing opportunities for untouchables and ethnic groups to generate income through community entrepreneurship in their native lands near ancestral homes/farms/villages. 

OC4D includes training/mentoring of youth as community mobilizers in remote villages, particularly the "youthquake" whereby youth become facilitators/mobilizers who empower others from their own disadvantaged/minority groups.

OC4D is a tech-based solution offering a collaborative approach toward digital & ICT literacy by exploring/applying content related to entrepreneurship/self-reliance. 

OC4D evolved organically since 2001 with locally-adapted iterations of online content tools, ICT design, training materials & localization/adaptation & dissemination approaches. Pioneered in communities of South Asia (Nepal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), we’ve been requested to globalize access & launch pilots in 5 West African countries (Benin, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali & Ghana). Before we do so, we’d like the SOLVE team to help evaluate our interface, training tools, & consider strategic scale in a parallel way to MIT’s OCW Initiative.

OC4D's greatest source of innovation lies in our full-fledged commitment to local leadership. Locals know what locals need. It sounds like a platitude; but, this true principle is often overlooked in development programs.

Locals lead out as they amalgamate, tailor & contextualize educational content to suit their needs. This innovation is unlimited, untapped & unpredictable. (In an exciting way!) OC4D is anchored in multilingual localization of methods, tech-tools & training materials. It hinges on strategic partnerships with local experts & localized ICT providers.

Through OC4D tools, we've seen rural Himalayan farmers learn to sell mandarin oranges online, thereby eliminating middlemen's gouging fees. We've seen Filipino sari-sari (housefront) store owners collaborate to aggregate purchase orders in order to bulk-buy & reap deep discounts. We've seen youth interview Newari elders of in falchas (place where Nepalese elders philosophize) to preserve cultural histories of temples & screen their mini-films. 

Indeed, innovation is intricately tied to localization and the sky's the limit!

Our youth-led focus also bolsters innovation. Youth gravitate to new tech-tools. Adults are often intimidated by technology, particularly those who never went to school. By involving youth as mentors in our ICT centers, we establish intergenerational connections whereby youth are motivated to learn, teach and stay in their villages. 

Youth motivate families/neighbors/elders to participate while developing leadership in the younger generation. As youth support women's groups, farmers, merchants, and sewing groups, they become aware of community problems and work together in innovative ways to identify new solutions that benefit the entire community.

OER powers OC4D by making entrepreneurial & ICT educational tools localizable & available for free with Creative Commons (CC) licenses. They embrace the 5Rs of open content: retain, reuse, revise, remix & redistribute. OER activates the truth that: "knowledge worth knowing is knowledge worth sharing." This ICT-education-nexus increasingly transforms learning environs around the world.

However, the majority of OER beneficiaries are in higher-ed degree-oriented programs. OER tech is still on the cusp of being used in new & creative ways to reach the broad segment of lower-literate learners around the world. 

Adaptation of the existing OER technology requires disruptive innovation in the ed-tech world by creating a new market & value network. This holds the potential to eventually disrupt an existing market and value network, displacing established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. 

With extra vigilance to locally-led implementation, OC4D will support micro-education with micro-learning centers operating in a unique type of  ubiquitous microfranchise.

In our post-Covid world, OER tools are increasingly relevant since implementing social distancing protocols. We're now better able to utilize OER since connectivity to the Internet is growing, low-cost computers proliferate & enhanced mobile devices enable leapfrogging of infrastructural setbacks.

Expanding OER tech to reach bottom-of-the-pyramid markets is still a mystery. OC4D seeks to do this by working with partners who serve those on the fringe in a collaborative effort to explore, create & improve delivery mechanisms that allow distance education to really “go the distance” in order to expand the right to education for all.

For the past 2 decades, our team experimented with various iterations of ICT-based entrepreneurial-education which resulted in OC4D. 

Working with local NGO partners in the adult literacy arena, we've learned setbacks/opportunities of expanding entrepreneurial-education through tech-based solutions. Each program is unique; each partner offers different assets/handicaps. 

While students at Oxford University in 2000-2001, our team met and  experimented with ICT in Africa. We formed Community Development Network (CDN) to receive 30 computers available from a campus lab upgrade. Once hardware was received in Zimbabwe, other needs arose: a paucity of curated content & lack of localizable software to support integrated ICT training & literacy. We aggregated best practices/tools to culturalize/contextualize ICT training via familiar cultural mediums.

Meanwhile, Tiffany worked for ProLiteracy Worldwide in Nepal/India/Thailand/South Africa on entrepreneurial-literacy-initiatives for women. Program partners increasingly requested ICT to support content-once program-funding ended. Local-experts explored ICT-tool feasibility. 

In 2003-2007, Tiffany worked as South-Asia Adult-Literacy-Coordinator in Pakistan/Bangladesh/India with funding from USAID & WorldEducation to support 30 NGOs. Locals' concern was, "How do we sustain momentum once funding dies?"

Repeatedly, NGO partners requested ICT to circumnavigate government/infrastructural delays hampering literacy. Based in Boston, Tiffany learned of MIT's nascent OpenCourseWare initiative. She conducted PhD research on localization of OER & worked with student-interns to build/pilot the OC4D prototype in 10 youth-managed-resource-centers of Nepal.

OC4D is a communal-collaborative-creation of these 2 decades of struggle. It is a portal offering best-practices/tools curated/tailored for locals by locals. We know OC4D works because 220 unique users visit the portal each day.

The theory of change for OC4D is this:

1) Local literate youth are trained in ICT tools & mentored by local NGOs to integrate ICT in existing community centers to search/localize content relevant to literacy learners in their communities (training is provided to NGO partners who then train local youth).

2) Youth mentors utilize OC4D to access critical content which is used to facilitate literacy classes focused on entrepreneurship. The core content available through OC4D (in pdf, wiki, and google-doc formats) has been provided for free through world literacy leaders (InterweaveSolutions, WorldEducation& ProLiteracy Worldwide). These tool kits are an amalgam of existing iterations of entrepreneurial education tools which have been culturalized/localized/contextualized in several languages by local partner NGOs of the INGOs mentioned above. 

3) Literacy classes are formed according to interest/needs of local groups (farmers groups, sewing groups, merchant groups etc mostly composed of adult women). Literacy levels are assessed through dialogue and activities with increasing access to ICT training as their literacy improves. 

4) Unique curricula are created for each learning group by selecting from the library of OER resources available through OC4D. Topics include resource assessment, community mapping, starting and growing your own business & 6Ps of business (product, price, place, promotion, people, performance). 

5) Learning groups (including literacy learners & youth mentors) forge bonds through intimate sharing, augmenting entrepreneurial literacy with self-reliance-topics addressing life-choices, goal-setting, problem-solving, budgeting, abuse, human-rights, environmental-stewardship, sanitation etc. for personal/family/community progress. These tools are also offered via OC4D (chapters/units/tools may be amalgamated in unique/custom ways or the entire manuals may be downloaded at once).

Two decades of experience has provided valuable evidence not only why localization matters (a statement that has been hypothesized for the past decade); but also provides proof of how localization is executed by youth-leaders & concrete ways localization could be improved in order for OER to reap efficacious learning gains for more rural people in developing countries across the globe.  Read full text of research here which includes qualitative studies, interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and OC4D artifact reviews to identify patterns of localization practices.  

OC4D has been fully deployed in 10 communities of Nepal where the Tiffany's PhD dissertation research was conducted with Nepalese & American researchers. Direct beneficiaries included 30 youth facilitators & 450 adult literacy learners. Each of these learners represented families/businesses with 6,000 indirect beneficiaries. During this time, the OC4D site was being built by Nepalese computer-tech students based in the USA together with the Nepal-based Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Club at Tribhuvan University who built a wiki-based format to allow for improved localization.

As the OC4D platform became more usable with more resources digitized/ uploaded, our INGO partners (InterweaveSolutions, World Education, ProLiteracy Worldwide) started referring their respective in-country NGO partners (450 NGOs in Africa, Asia & Latin America) to the site. Our site was regularly receiving 220 unique visitors per day (80,300 hits per year) which was mostly from facilitators & NGO leaders. This was organic growth and mostly by word of mouth between NGOs on the ground without direct training from our OC4D team. Those users amounted to .5 million users. The number of beneficiaries who were taught or benefitted by those who accessed the site is exponential (usually 10-15 direct learners associated with each facilitator) which easily translates to 5Million -7.5Million annually. 

As site-traffic increased, our site experienced difficulties. OC4D was hacked & we have been currently working on rebuilding it from scratch, working to optimize it to become more robust to facilitate more traffic and to be more mobile-friendly with content packaged/tagged in searchable ways.

Goals in the Next Year

1) Rebuild OC4D site with input from MIT's Solve team & MIT's OCW team.

2) Upload all multi-lingual content tools in multiple formats (pdf/google doc/photo gallery etc) provided by InterweaveSolutions, WorldEducation, and ProLiteracy Worldwide. 

3) Tag/package all content by region/topic/language/culture/geography etc in searchable database.

4) Finish making training videos for youth facilitators (we have some but they could be remade with subtitles available in core languages).

5) Marketing outreach & campaign to existing 450 partner NGOS on the ground & then to other NGOs across the globe.

6) Collaborate with the Hewlett Foundation & MIT & OERAfrica to conduct research on OER for use in the nonformal sector with adult literacy learners to correlate the impact on entrepreneurship & job creation.

7) Host regional "Youth-Summits" to gather youth facilitators to share best practices for localization, for facilitation, for ICT-design.

8) Solidify a micro-enterprise model for micro-franchising community ICT centers to create a sustainable model to charge for services & cover costs of paid staff, printing, electricity, internet etc. Identify how to provide a solid mix of the benefits of a cyber-cafes with the learning opportunities of a vocational schools in a community-based, user-friendly environment.

1) Financial barriers to building the software and creating the portal in a timely way. We are mostly volunteers working on this and that presents time constraints due to our paid work that conflicts with dedication to OC4D.

2) Technical/Infrastructural barriers exist in many of the communities where we work. Load-shedding (random termination of electricity) is common & unpredictable. Internet connections are not always reliable. We're worked on supporting centers to become more independent through solar panels/battery systems, low-tech & low-energy computer systems/Raspberry Pi computers etc. and line-of-sight-mesh-network internet relays. There is still a lot to learn in this arena & using local engineers & locally-sourced parts is essential. Different products are available in different countries/localities so, while we continue to share best practices between groups, this still requires collaboration of our NGO partners with local engineers which can be costly.

3) Market Barriers exist since many of our youth-managed centers are run by volunteers. Some centers have managed to pay their facilitators. But, as youth become more skilled in ICT training and facilitator skills, these youth become more marketable and have been offered paying jobs for other NGOs which means they have less time to volunteer in our centers. 

4) Cultural Barriers exist since rural societies usually place elders at the top of the pecking-order. Youth sometimes confront resistance to their autonomy and increasing voice. As change-makers, youth are passionate, driven & influential. Sometimes governments, church leaders & elders resist this & try to suppress their mobilization efforts.

1) Financial barriers may be overcome with angel funding, grants, and partnerships with ICT providers. If salaries are secured for OC4D developers, we may build the software and create the portal in a timely way by focusing dedication of time, talent, resources to build the portal.

2) Technical/Infrastructural barriers may be overcome by researching new tech tools & innovative partners who can help us simplify and streamline equipment in kind of microfranchise-model. Ideally, each center will become independent through solar panels/battery systems, low-tech & low-energy computer systems/Raspberry Pi computers etc. and line-of-sight-mesh-network internet relays. Forming a partnership/collaboration with tech &  hardware providers may allow bulk-buying of supplies for deep-discounts.

3) Market Barriers may be overcome if youth-managed centers have a mix of paid-staff and volunteer interns who build the pipeline. 

We will shift the paradigm by viewing it as progress when youth become more skilled in ICT training/facilitator-skills & marketable for other jobs. We will plan on those youth transitioning in order to make way for new paid staff. This will generate more jobs with more skilled laborers & stronger community networks to exponentially accelerate/expand outreach.

4) Cultural Barriers may be overcome by holding discussion groups with elders & community leaders in order to help them see the benefits of education, ICT, and its direct impact on community development & income generation. If a "community champion" can be identified to support this bridge-building, we've seen power dynamics shift and shift these youth-elder hierarchy barriers into youth-elder collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Full Time (Volunteers, Unpaid)

Tiffany Ivins (Co-Founder, Director)

Nhamburo Ziyenge (Co-Founder)

Part Time (Paid)

Ramita Shrestha (Trainer)

Sunila Shrestha (Trainer)

Paru Shrestha (Trainer)

April Toko (Admin)

Contractors/Consultants (Paid)

Mitchell Spence (Business Strategy)

Heather Phipps (Content Developer)

Drew Bayles (ICT/Website Developer)

Concept drafted 2001; research conducted 2002-2003; pilot #1 launched 2004-2006;  9 more pilot centers launched in 2007-2011; revamping website, app, tools & preparing to scale (2011-2020).

Our power lies in our collaboration and we have the best literacy partners in the world with a massive network of 450 literacy NGOs who are committed to integrating ICT and expanding entrepreneurial literacy.

OC4D is a tech-based solution offering a collaborative approach toward digital & ICT literacy by exploring/applying content related to entrepreneurship/self-reliance. OC4D evolved organically since 2001 with locally-adapted iterations of online content tools, ICT design, training materials, and localization/adaptation/dissemination approaches. 

Working with Dr. David Wiley (an OER Pioneer, MIT Partner & founder of the "Open Content" movement), Tiffany was mentored during her PhD in Instructional Psychology and Technology with a particular focus on localization of OER and building capacity of youth-leaders to expand access.

The evolution of OC4D was anchored in hermeneutic-inquiry augmented by interpretive phenomenological-analysis and quasi-ethnographic research methods. Several qualitative studies were employed to collect interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and artifact reviews to identify patterns of localization practices and themes related to localization of this critical content. 

Pioneered in communities of South Asia (Nepal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), we’ve been requested to globalize access to this content, launching pilots in 5 West African countries (Benin, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali & Ghana). Before we do so, we’d like the SOLVE team to help evaluate our interface, training tools, & consider strategic scale in a parallel way to MIT’s OCW Initiative.

ProLiteracy Worldwide - self-reliance & literacy tools (pedagogy); How to Start & Grow your Own Business

Interweave Solutions - entrepreneurial kits, ABCs of Business, Literacy for Business Success, Master of Business in the Streets

World Education - Girls Access to Education Program, Youth Migration for Work Program, Basic Adult Literacy Program

Sankhu Rural Information Technology Center (Nepal Pilot team)

Zimondi Vocational School & Literacy Program (Zimbabwe)

Life Elevate (Cote D'Ivoire, Benin, Togo)

Pythia International (Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mali)

Latter-Day Saint Charities - dissemination networks across Africa, Asia, Central America with approval from area presidencies in Francophone West African to launch 5 pilots this fall 2020.

University Interns around the world who are committed to help learn, train & build capacity (currently from Tribhuvahn University, Brigham Young University, Pepperdine University, University of Utah)

Please review this case study and business model proposition written for OC4D and sustainability of this model:
Microfranchising Micro-learning Centers with OER

Please review this case study and proposition written for OC4D and sustainability of this model:
Microfranchising Micro-learning Centers with OER

Input from multi-disciplinary angles addressing the viability and optimization of the OC4D site, creation of ed-tech tookits, mentoring/training tools, support in the creation of relevant scope for strategic scaling timeline.

Solidify partnerships with 450 NGOs and expand. 

Input from multi-disciplinary angles addressing the viability and optimization of the OC4D site, creation of ed-tech tookits, mentoring/training tools, support in the creation of relevant scope for strategic scaling timeline.

MIT OCW

MIT Faculty

Solve Members

The majority of participants in literacy classes are women.