Project Stand Up

An education model for accessible, creative learning for displaced persons powered by youth

Project Stand Up or PSU Hub is an education model powered by youth and designed for refugee teachers working in crisis affected communities. Its goal is to help teachers provide individualized learning in order to improve learning outcomes, particularly for girls. The PSU Hub model has been co-designed with youth and their families from refugee communities in Malaysia. The model will be piloted with these communities and participating Community Learning Centers (informal learning centers that provide education to refugees) this year.

Too often, refugee teachers and the children in their classrooms do not have access to adequate materials and capacity to provide individualized learning required to meet the needs of learners who come from disparate backgrounds in conflict-affected areas. This is not only the case in Malaysia, where refugee children and youth do not have access to formal education, but in similar urban refugee contexts and camp settings.

The PSU Hub supplements traditional teacher directed learning offered in Community Learning Centers, by providing 1) a toolkit and guidebook for setting up a youth governed space 2) curriculum and training for learner-centered learning (for the learner and education facilitators) 3) a mobile application that connects learning to the community. By making education a team sport and connecting parents to education efforts the PSU hub moves refugee education beyond survival to creating learning experiences that foster creativity, teamwork, problem-solving, and critical thinking. It allows refugee educators to create opportunities that allow students to help their communities now and gain skills relevant to the jobs and livelihoods of the future. At the same time, it facilitates greater involvement of parents in their child’s education and works to remove barriers that keep girls from participating equally in learning opportunities because of competing responsibilities (childcare, cooking, and cleaning). 

We are co-designing the 'Stand Up' app with youth, communities and families, who are the users. They are at the heart of the process every step of the way. Too often end users are designed 'for', not 'with'. We believe in 'nothing for us without us'. The PSU hub and app create a service ecosystem where education needs are being directly met, while underlying factors inhibiting participation are also being addressed - the gender norms and household work that keeps girls away from school.

Technology is used an integral tool to in our solution as it provides:

1. Our mobile application connects the PSU hub with the community and families. It is also used to facilitate youth in becoming empowered to take on important roles within their community and lead by example on issues of equal access to education, particularly for girls.
2.  A vehicle for accessing online learning materials that students and education facilitators at the PSU hub use to study and prepare to earn a GED (General Education Development (GED)) or to prepare themselves for sitting for the International General Certificate Exam. 

• Co- design and develop our curriculum for learner centered learning for both education facilitators and learners.
• Select and train a pilot cohort of 25 young people (16-25 years) (refugees from Somali and Arabic speaking countries in Malaysia) to join the PSU hub.
• Work with partner community learning center, providing primary and lower-secondary education, to have families (at least 100) trial the use of our mobile application for a period of 3-6 months. 
• Monitor, Evaluate, Learn and collect user feedback in order to improve our solution. 
• Design a pilot to test solution in a refugee camp setting. 

Our vision is to build partnerships with already existing initiatives to support the expansion of their ongoing work. Community-buy in and ownership is key to our solutions success.

For early and major adoption of our solution, we will work with the 128 refugee Community Learning Centers (CLCs) already providing education to refugees in Malaysia, that are interested in participating. We are already connected to many of these through our organizations work.

To scale our work, we are currently building partnerships with organizations working refugee camp settings that have expressed interest in working with us.

We reach our beneficiaries by partnering with local community initiatives. In particular, we work with youth from those communities who take on leadership roles in the design and implementation and management of the solution. This ensures community ownership and sustainability as the solution can be adapted to meet the specific needs of a given community or context. 

Currently, we are working with a group of eight young people from Somalia, Yemen and Libya (refugees living in Gombak), ten community learning center refugee teachers from Somalia (also in Gombak), and community members from the Gomabk refugee community to design the solution. The process has been led by the youth, using Human Centered Design approaches and tools. 

By the end of 2018, we will have 25 young people using the PSU hub, 1 education facilitator, and a minimum of 100 families from the community (connected to the community learning center that we are working with), using our mobile application.

In three years, our goal is to have the model used in all of the 128 Community Learning Centres in Malaysia and be used in refugee education programs in refugee camps. 

• Up to 9 years of experience working at the community-level with refugees in Malaysia 
• Human Centered Design skills
• Participatory methodologies 
• Project management 
• Creativity 
• Cross-cultural communication skills (we have team members of varying ages, ethnicities, religions)
• Youth team with creative confidence, empathy and a lot of grit

Our solution includes a toolkit/facilitation guide on how to design the PSU hub to meet the financial needs of the PSU hub in different communities. These needs will vary based on community and context. For the pilot community, they needed a physical space, this meant incorporating income generating activities as part of the model. For example, part of the PSU hub space will be a cafe (youth/young people run) and integrated into the education model as a way to provide vocational training and work experience to students at the PSU hub. 

We believe Solve can advance our work by connecting us with experts that can support us in successfully using technology as a tool in our solution. Our expertise lies in community engagement and co-creating meaningful educational opportunities for refugee communities - using tech as a tool is new to us. We seek connections to tech expertise to support and mentor our students to refine, evaluate and iterate their app design, and to business development expertise to support sustainability and scaling of the model.   

Currently, key barriers include reaching individuals from different sectors that could support the expansion of our work (business, finance, communications). While the solution has the capacity to expand, our organization needs improved capacity in order to support its expansion. Being a part of SOLVE would open up our reach to more people, experts, and sectors.