LearnWithMe

Oladimeji Fatoki has six years of experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Bachelor’s of Science (Education) in Social Studies with a First-Class Honours from the Tai Solarin University of Education, Nigeria. He is a committed fellow with YALI RLC West Africa and Teach For Nigeria by providing every Nigerian child with the opportunity to access quality education. Oladimeji teaches leads and impacts in a public-primary school in an underserved community to end educational inequality by facilitating 21st- century skills of numeracy and literacy. He has impacted over 200 pupils who are developing morally, academically, psychologically and socially. He collaboratively worked with peers to train over 100 teachers in effective instructional delivery. Oladimeji has extensive volunteer work experiences. Previously, Oladimeji worked with community-based Organization and led a team of 150 Emergency Management Vanguards (NEMA) to sensitize over 3000 populace on emergency management and disaster prevention.

I am committed to solving educational inequity. UNESCO (2020) data shows 1.3 billion Children are out of school worldwide due to school closures linked to the coronavirus pandemic. 810 million students from preprimary through secondary are out of school due to nationwide school closures in developing countries. According to UNESCO (2018), 13.2 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria was ranked as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, approximately 10.5 million. Despite that, 60% of the children enrolled in primary school are not learning. 

We will create an audio-visual offline learning platform with support of learner’s parents, guardians and expertise of community and by training teachers to easily navigate the offline platform to teach the curriculum content to reach a wide number of learners in the underserved communities during and post Covid-19. Learning will be assessed through the use of phone calls and SMS.

UNESCO (2020) data shows 1.3 billion Children are out of school worldwide due to school closures linked to the coronavirus pandemic. 810 million students from preprimary through secondary are out of school due to nationwide school closures in developing countries. According to UNESCO (2018), 13.2 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria as against the UNESCO (2013) data when Nigeria was ranked as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, approximately 10.5 million. Despite that, 60% of the children enrolled in primary school are not learning. The quality of teaching and learning is so poor that many do not go to secondary school, and of those that go to secondary school, many cannot even read and write when they finish and only about 10% make it to the tertiary level. This has frightening consequences for the development of our country.

The LearnWithMe project is an offline platform that provides access to learners in underserved communities to learn in an offline mode and at their own pace. It is an audio-visual platform that caters for all categories of learners. The curriculum contents will be prepared by individual teachers and at their own pace which requires no internet connectivity. The audio-visual offline lessons that cater to learners characteristics is an extension of the physical classroom setting where instructional materials are used with effective instructional delivery methods

The mode of delivering lessons prepared for the learners include: The lessons prepared based on the curriculum will be copied into memory cards and the memory cards will be inserted into card readers which will be played through a DVD player. Lessons also will be burnt into empty CDs which are to be played via DVD player. The number of CDs and memory cards with card readers provided will be delivered to learners to be reached. With this, learning can reach a wider number of learners:  Lessons that have been prepared offline can be shared from the smartphone of the Sender via Xender or Bluetooth enabled device of the receiver to be played to the learners. 

I teach lead and impact in an underserved community in a public-primary school to end educational inequity with a shared vision, "one day, every Nigerian child will the opportunity to access to quality education." The community where I teach is a border town with people of different languages, cultures, and identity. 

My recent discussion with learner's parents, teachers, students, school heads, local government educational authority, and community members through phone calls, questionnaire, and for those eligible (mostly teachers) to use emails and are using social media handles; Facebook, Whatsapp etc. I found out that every one of people is passionate about quality education and are frustrated with the outrageous injustice of educational inequity by Covid-19 which is jeopardizing the future of their children. The majority with the financial crisis and illiterate parents could not take further steps in educating their children.

From my discussion with learners on the phone, I saw the eagerness to return to school and they were pleading if any means could be provided for them to keep learning and some of them reiterated their future goals to me and how quality education can help to achieve it. These are what birth the LearnWithMe offline learning project.

As learners most especially children in underserved communities feel increasingly powerless against coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, LearnWithMe project as an offline learning platform gives quality education access to out-of-school children during and Covid-19. It corroborates with the mission of The Elevate Price in ensuring that all children in Nigeria have access to effective quality education, and safe learning environments to live and prosper; to mitigate and adapt to the effects of coronavirus pandemic through social distance learning; and to create educational equity awareness among people to grow in empathy with energy, ideas, solutions and results that can elevates humanity.  

As a fellow with Teach For Nigeria, in 2019 I started working on LearnWithMe project. I teach, lead and impact beyond the classroom in an underserved community in a public-primary school. The community is a border where the majority are into smuggling activities. The children in the school could not read and write; the result shows they are not learning. I was amazed upon my first encounter with my pupils, they could barely identify the letters of the alphabet, spell and pronounce simple words and make sentences.

I received a lot of stereotype comments from other teachers and community members. With Empathy, I accepted the challenge and started using educational technology to link learning to reality, created a welcoming environment, instructional materials, translated the curriculum to their characteristics and giving it my all to make sure the pupils learn. I started connecting the dots.

I formed cordial and professional relationships with teachers, school heads, pupils, pupil's parents and community members for them to complement my effort in reaching every child for quality education. Going forward, in 2020 Covid-19 gave the radical approach for LearnWithMe project to fully unleash to allow for the continuity in learning for out-of-school learners.

I am from a low-income family size of 8. While growing up, I only had my mother (a firewood trader) and her sister support. My Primary and Secondary education was a trudge and with naysayers malign coupled with the “debtor” mantra on me from school administrators. I almost resulted in lethargy after I was withdrawn from grade 11th to attend tutorials due to financial constraints. I stayed back one-year at home after my WASSCE result was withheld before I segued to the University. I subsist despite all odds, meagre resources and swerved with an astounding achievement as I bagged my B.Sc. (Ed.) in Social Studies with First-Class Honours.

According to UNESCO (2018), 13.2 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria. My experience in an underserved community triggers my humanitarian appeal for educational equity (SDG 4). This endeared my current fellowship Teach For Nigeria and YALI RLC West Africa. Being eco-friendly I had influenced over 100 teachers' pedagogy through the intervention of Educational and community stakeholders, we built a structure around the Parent Teachers Association for inclusive learning. Teamwork, empathy, and leadership are part of my impact on over 200 pupils with visible results in their academic, morals and environmental consciousness.

LearnWithMe project aims to provide quality education for all. I earned a Bachelor of Science (Education) in Social Studies with First-Class Honours. During undergraduate, I took uninterrupted weekly academic tutorials to Sociological Studies students in the Department of Sociological studies across all level. This was based on skills developed overtime during course
work in research and curriculum, development, leadership and teacher training. Monitoring and Evaluating participants academic level, the results show a higher percentage of positive results as they had A and B grades, the C grade was very minimal. 

I further proceed to develop school-based curriculum for grade 6 pupils during teaching practice to make learning suits different categories of learners and revised the curriculum with classroom teachers and school administrators which recorded positive feedback from pupils education and external community commendations. 

These experiences made me a fellow with YALI RLC West Africa and Teach For Nigeria, to teach, lead and impact in a public-primary school in an underserved community to promote quality education and organized a series of capacity building to teachers and community members in reimagining education in the 21st century. I played a key role in breaking down school's
curriculum into meaning contents, termly, weekly, bi-weekly and strategies for writing quality lesson notes, good methods, and skills for inclusive learning that affect learning positively in school and external community.

As a passionate teacher-leader in an underserved community in a public-primary school, I met my pupils in a very poor state where the majority could recite but cannot identify the letters of the alphabet. I engaged in root-causes analysis why pupils are not learning, then I discovered there were teacher factors, parental factors, school factors and community orientation. 

I organized a teacher training program for over 100 teachers through the intervention of the Education Authority, and also with the School's support we built a structure around PTA (Parent Teachers Association) that helps us to connect with pupil's parents. 

I worked closely to know the categories of learners in the classroom and I use an updated and practical approach, educational technology to make learning inclusive visible in their progressive academic results. Teamwork, empathy, leadership and responsibility are part of what over 200 pupils have developed over time.

I engaged the school heads and spurred several meetings aside from the general meetings on how to achieve our goal. We also reviewed logistics from time to time which made us to always be rated high by external examiners with an improved learners' all-round performance.

In the year 2019 which as the Nigeria's General Elections, I was given the privilege to recruit Assistant Presiding Officers for my ward's polling unit and voting point as a Presiding Officer for the Presidential, Senatorial, House of Representative, Gubernatorial and State House of Assembly General elections. This was an election that represented over 200 million Nigerians. There were over 3,000 people at my polling unit and voting points. First, it appears to be difficult to manage the matured youths some were after bribery to manipulate elections from political parties and some lack the confidence to be fully involved. I had several strategic meetings with my team aside from the general meetings on how to achieve our goal and reviewed logistics from time to time to promote unity and teamwork coupled with tensions from the public, political party agents, observers, enforcement agencies etc.

Before the elections, as the President of National Emergency Management Agency Community Development Service, I led a team of over 150 members to sensitize over 20,000 community members on voter education, civic engagement and elections process by reputable radio programmes and social media handles that ensured a peaceful election outcome. I learned perseverance, creativity, teamwork and problem-solving.

LearnWithMe project is part of Teach For Nigeria through my fellowship with Teach For Nigeria. The Teach for Nigeria, an NGO which a shared vision "One day; every Nigerian child will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." It recruits Nigeria’s most promising future leaders from varied disciplines to teach in Nigeria’s underserved schools in low-income communities through a highly selective, two-year Fellowship. The Teach For Nigeria model is based on the proven success of 40 country organizations including Teach For America, Teach First UK and Teach For India, who are all part of the Teach For All network.

LearnWithMe project is an innovate solution to solve the challenge of educational inequity for learners in underserved communities. Ever since the worldwide lockdown of places posed by the noble coronavirus, schools have been shut and learners without technological devices and internet facilities are not learning which creates a wider space of educational inequity. For a transformational change to occur, many organizations like Teach For All, Lead for Ghana, Leap Africa and other non-governmental organizations. governments, educationist have been on a lookout for innovative ways to keep every child learning in this period but their efficient approach is restricted only to learners with internet facility e.g Whatsapp, Zoom, Google meet etc. which most learners in the underserved communities lack. 

LearnWithMe is a unique offline platform that provides learning for all categories of learners irrespective of their socio-economic background. Through the platform, audio-visual lessons are prepared by individual teachers with no external support and create engaging learning content with adequate use of instructional materials. Learners can see their teachers teach them since the platform replicates the physical classroom setting. It needs no internet for lesson preparation and also for sending lessons. Lessons are installed into memory cards, empty discs to be played with a DVD, and also lessons can be sent from the sender to a Xender or Bluetooth enabled devices. The data wise improvement process will be done via phone calls and SMS(through learner's parents, guardians, friends, etc.) to track students learning and other assessments. 

LearnWithMe supports schools, learners and districts with offline learning for learners in underserved communities during and beyond Covid-19. 

We provide pieces of training for teachers to easily navigate the LearnWithMe platform at their own pace for offline learning preparation and delivery methods. This also includes the creation of graphical assets; completing instructor design interface; developing student and teacher materials for classroom-based physical modelling. Maximum attention will focus on the enhancement of effective lessons delivery and making learning to be meaningful and colourful by outsourcing adequate instructional materials to cater for all categories of learners (visual, audio and kinesthetic) and making learning reach thousands of learners.

Teachers, stakeholders and student focus groups meet through the use of SMS, Phone calls, etc. to review materials. The revision of materials based on pilot test data which will lead to dissemination of the beta offline lesson preparation version to field test teachers and schools. It includes the appropriate collection of research data.

It is expected that learners will be sufficiently learning at their on the pace when they finally access the offline lessons. We will continue to monition and evaluate student learning with a series of assessments through the use of SMS and Phone calls. We will widen dissemination efforts including refinement of educational technology explaining offline lesson preparation and how teachers gain access. We are focusing on using student focus groups to evaluate the impact of the instructional delivery methods and validate assumptions made by the team.

It is of our belief that if learners and teachers receive support and feel more involved, prepared, and are equipped with the tools to get the information they need and ensure effective collaboration, then that will help promote educational equity during and post Covid-19 that will translate into ultimately improved students outcomes. 

As a teacher-leader in an underserved community in a public-primary school, I am currently impacting 250 learners and in the next one year I will be serving 3,000 learners and in the next 5 years, I will be serving 15,000 learners across the states in Nigeria.

My goal within the next year is to scale LearnWithMe project and field test it in the southwestern part of Nigeria. Also, to keep training teachers on how to use the platform to provide adequate offline lessons for the learners. I will be conducting research, collecting data and testing the models of LearnWithMe to see what changes are needed to be adjusted and how learners are progressing using the platform. I will also volunteer for like-minded local and international organizations to help them conduct high-quality research, data analysis and interpretation and take proactive measures for an improved education system.

In the next five (5) years, I envision the use of LearnWithMe platform across the thirty-six (36) States in Nigeria. I will partner with governments, schools, non-governmental organizations, educational authority and other relevant stakeholders to make the project widely acceptable. The students impacted should have grown to be of sound mind, make an inferential judgement, possess a high level of analytical, leadership, problem-solving and creative skills. These are learners who will be job creators and will not serve as a liability to their country. Leaders will emerge through the LearnWithMe project and thousands of teachers would have been trained. When schools are on vacation, teachers can continue to engage the learners with the platform without the learners needing to attend the physical classroom setting.

The barriers that currently exist for the accomplishment of LearnWithMe project goals in the next year and the next five years are:

1) Financial.

2) Cultural.

3) Legal.

4) Technical.

5) Market barriers.

To address the barriers that currently exist for the accomplishment of LearnWithMe project goals in the next year and the next five years are:

Financial: We will need fund for research and development, teachers training, transportation, airtime subscriptions for phone calls, SMS, assessments and data collection and analysis, administrative and non-administrative expenses. Also, we are looking at providing DVD players, memory cards, card readers and video discs to learners who may not have access to Video players at home to access our offline learning.

Cultural and Market barriers: The underserved communities are of different languages, cultures and perspectives. We will need to organize a workshop, symposium, and conference that will bring learners, parents, teachers, community members, and other stakeholders together on the importance of the LearnWithMe project and how they can easy access the offline platform. Concerns, questions, opinions and observations will be attended to.

Legal: We need a partnership with government, non-governmental and inter-governmental, educational authorities, private and cross-sector organizations who are major stakeholders to widen the horizon of the LearnWithMe project. 

Technical: We need a team of technical people that will help train the users of the LearnWithMe platform. It will help the project to be well accepted by all and sundry so they could easily navigate through it.

The organisations I am in partnership with include: Teach For Nigeria, Teach For All network, and Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Center (RLC) West Africa. I am working with these organizations through my current fellowship with them. 

LearnWithMe project aims to combat the injustice of educational inequity in Nigeria. It provides access to learning in an offline mode for learners in underserved communities irrespective of their socio-economic background. The lessons based on curriculum contents are prepared by teachers through the LearnWithMe platform, who will then put the offline learning into memory cards through card readers; empty video discs or send the lessons through Xender or Bluetooth enabled device of the receivers. The aim is to allow learning to reach every Nigerian child to access quality education during and post Covid-19. The assessment will be done via phone calls and SMS for social distance. UNESCO (2020) data shows 1.3 billion Children are out of school worldwide due to school closures linked to the coronavirus pandemic. 810 million students from preprimary through secondary are out of school due to nationwide school closures in developing countries. According to UNESCO (2018), 13.2 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria as against the UNESCO (2013) data when Nigeria was ranked as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, approximately 10.5 million. Despite that, 60% of the children enrolled in primary school are not learning. The quality of teaching and learning is so poor that many do not go to secondary school, and of those that go to secondary school, many cannot even read and write when they finish and only about 10% make it to the tertiary level. This has frightening consequences for the development of our country.

LearnWithMe path to financial sustainability is to engage in fundraiser; go-fund-me, crowdfunding, through sustained donations and grants, selling products or services to private firms through pieces of training who can use the same platform to reach their audience, raising investment capital and also writing proposals to governments for sponsorship. It will partner with like-minded organizations who share the same vision of providing educational equity for children in underserved communities both in Nigeria and in the global space for sustainable development.

The funding amount I seek to scale LearnWithMe project (an offline learning platform to promote education equity for learners in underserved communities) is thirty thousand dollars ($30,000) grant by September 2020. 

LearnWithMe estimated expenses for 2020 is fifty thousand dollars ($50,000)

UNESCO (2020) data shows 1.3 billion Children are out of school worldwide due to school closures linked to the coronavirus pandemic. 810 million students from preprimary through secondary are out of school due to nationwide school closures in developing countries. According to UNESCO (2018), 13.2 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria and with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, approximately 10.5 million. Despite that, 60% of the children enrolled in primary school are not learning. The quality of teaching and learning is so poor that many do not go to secondary school, and of those that go to secondary school, many cannot even read and write when they finish and only about 10% make it to the tertiary level. 

I started LearnWithMe offline learning platform to teach, lead and impact in learners in an underserved community to promote education equity of the 21st century with a vision, “one day every Nigerian child will have an opportunity to attain quality education”.The Elevate Prize will help to address the barriers of funding, legal, market barriers with the mission to address critical social issue strengthens organizations and promotes innovation for the public good through professional management and development services, mentorship and coaching, educational training, capacity building, and connection with influencers, industry leaders, and experts through Elevate Prize Foundation’s two-year program.

In synergy to build Nigeria as a sustainable social change agent in community services,development, quality education and sparking local inequity through community building, encourages my application for The Elevate Prize.

LearnWithMe partnership goals will help to meet the standard of global goals by achieving the sustainable development goals with a commitment to quality education. LearnWithMe is a great idea of connecting all learners to promote quality education by learning in an offline mode. Its birth was as a result of the greater inequities posed by Covid-19.

To get on track and keep records of our mission for educational equity, youth empowerment and a vision for a better world. There is a need for teamwork and collaboration and leadership for LearnWithMe project to survive and for sustainability. With a heart of partnerships, we are on a mission greater than us and we will need to work together with governments, international organizations, companies, civil society groups, and statistics and data communities who represent all sectors of society and all regions of the world, dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

I am passionate about quality education (SDG 4). I will partner with national and global organizations like Teach For All, Teach For Nigeria, YALI RLC West Africa, HundreD and T4 Education. I am a fellow and ambassador of these organizations which will allow me to easily partner with them. I will also engage other like-minded organizations through media and publicity. These will help to scale and hone the potentials of LearnWithMe project so that every learner can access learning offline without the use of internet connectivity and practising social distance during and post Covid-19. LearnWithMe has full features of the physical classroom setting in making every learner in underserved communities have the opportunity to access quality education irrespective of their socio-economic background.