Unstructured Studio's ZubHub

Our target audience is 146 million children enrolled in elementary schools in rural India, where there is a lack of connectivity, resources, and inequities around creative education in traditional classrooms. Educators worldwide agree that creativity is the fundamental skill that schools need to cultivate. LinkedIn.com has also ranked creativity among the top 15 skills employers want. Over the last 1 year, we conducted pilots with 2000 children, leading us to Zubhub, a hub of creative hands-on projects and activities using low-cost materials for children and educators. Think of it like the Scratch platform, but not just for coding; it is for everything else! Our hub can be made available offline and accessible in multiple languages on the web and mobile devices and via WhatsApp and IVR messages. Our solution will help foster essential 4C skills of the 21st century and prepare children for jobs and pressing problems of the future.

146 million elementary school-going children are enrolled in rural schools in India (Source: U-DISE 15-16). However, a majority of them are devoid of opportunities to develop creativity, an essential 21st-century skill evaluated in January 2020 by Linkedin.com, among the top 15 skills employers want and advocated by educators worldwide as the most fundamental skill that schools need to cultivate. There are multiple reasons why children are missing these opportunities. Out of the 84% of primary schools in rural areas in India, only 28% have access to computers, and only 9% have the internet. In addition, only 18% of teachers have professional qualifications. This creates inequities in access to creative learning for a vast majority of students in India. In addition, there is a high cost associated with participating in such learning experiences in the form of STEM kits, special course enrollment, etc. Finally, there is limited access to advanced tools, frameworks, after-school centers, and a heavy reliance on traditional teaching and learning methods in the existing school systems. 

We are developing ZubHub, a hub of creative hands-on projects built with everyday materials, activity ideas, and an awesome community of kids and educators. Think of it like Scratch for creative hands-on projects or Hackaday for kids and educators, or a free and localized version of DIY.org for children in underserved communities. On ZubHub, any child anywhere will be able to join, get inspired by our collection of ideas and peers' projects, build with low-cost materials and tools available around them, and share their creations with others. No need to buy expensive STEM kits or enroll in subscriptions. 

Some of the primary features of ZubHub are creator portfolios, activity ideas, featured projects, collaborative project making, etc. In addition, ZubHub's design considers local cultures, context, and concerns and covers solution-driven activity themes to encourage children to address targeted problems in communities.

ZubHub is a free and open-source platform built using modern and fast web technologies: Django and React Native. It is accessible on the web and mobile devices and via WhatsApp and Interactive voice response (IVR) messages. In addition, Zubhub can be made available "offline" in low-connectivity areas or as a "customized version" for educational organizations.

We work with children, educators, and local partners (NGOs, schools) from rural and remote areas of Gujarat, India. Our children come from lower and middle-income families. Significantly, many of them have one shared computing device in their household (such as a mobile phone), live in zero or low-bandwidth areas, and are devoid of opportunities due to the inequities created by the social stratification of the caste system.

We follow a human-centered design approach and collaborative-decision making to involve the community we work with. We research to understand the impact of our programs and produce reports detailing our methodologies, lessons learned, and ideas for the next steps. We use WhatsApp and other collaboration tools to interact with our community and work with a dedicated staff member who helps with on-ground facilitation and reports feedback on the activities.

Through our work, we hypothesize that children will develop essential 4Cs of the 21st century: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration, which will help them address the pressing problems of society and excel in the future workforce. We plan to look into frameworks to assess creativity and apply them to inform our future work better. 

To address limited access to creative learning opportunities to children in the under-served / low-connectivity settings, we have developed a solution that aims to provide equitable access and engage children in hands-on, imaginative, and playful STEAM-rich learning experiences. We envision these experiences to improve children's learning and their lives in many ways. Thus it connects very well with the challenge "Enable access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings—including imaginative play, collaborative projects, and hands-on experiments."

So far, we have served 2000 children and educators from rural and remote areas of Gujarat, India. We have received an overwhelmingly positive response to our learning activities, programs, and frameworks. It led us to the initial prototype of the "hub of creative hands-on projects and activities" and tested it out with a smaller group of ~50 children. We incorporated the feedback gathered from this user research study and plan to do a general  launch for our broader community soon. We have documented our observations in a detailed report and overall impact so far on the website https://unstructured.studio/impact/ and shared stories of appreciation in our blog posts https://unstructured.studio/blog/. 

We are faced with a unique problem in remote and low-connectivity areas. We know that creative learning is absolutely essential for young learners. But on the other hand, we also know that in traditional learning systems adopted in those areas, creative learning is given the least significance and priority. All this while internet and mobile connectivity is surely and rapidly expanding. Hence, there is a unique opportunity to leverage the internet and network connectivity as a carrier for implementing creative learning solutions that promise a wide and equitable reach. The solution that we propose is an intervention designed to scale and adapt to the needs in such areas. Online or offline, built for collaboration as well as showcasing of ideas - our solution is versatile. It inspires educators and young learners alike. Each project added to our platform inspires and gives confidence to kids and their peers. Everyone can join the creative revolution from anywhere, with any materials they can lay their hands on and develop creative projects and solutions equally. Our solution does not cost anything, does not demand an expenditure and does not mandate any purchase or subscription - all the while providing an online, collaborative makerspace experience to all the kids! 

We primarily operate in India - specifically under-resourced communities of towns like Bhuj and Idar, Gujarat. However, our organization is formally registered as a not-for-profit in Canada, and the registration process for India is in progress. We plan to only operate in India in the next year. We are currently serving 2000 students, 40 educators in India. Within one year, we plan to serve 60,000 students and 250 educators in India. In the next five years, we expect to see exponential growth since our platform would have matured and we would have secured sufficient funding to scale our operations. We hope to serve around 5 million students, 10,000 educators, and on-ground collaborations with 100 education providers/schools across India by the end of the 5th year.

We have the following main indicators of our progress:

• Rate of increase and engagement between users (children and educators) on the ZubHub platform.

• Percentage of adoption of the platform by educational organizations in under-served regions across the globe.

• Increase in STEAM engagement in traditional school curriculum settings via the adoption of ZubHub platform.

• Percentage of increase in the 4C skills in Zubhub users.

• Number of offline installations of Zubhub.

• Rate of increase in contributors to our learning activities repository.

We are currently a team of 6 individuals who all work part-time (~20 hrs per week) on the project:

• 2 core team members and founders
• 1 software developer
• 1 learning facilitator and partnerships manager
• 2 interns for developing educational materials

Our team members are geographically dispersed across three continents (Asia, Africa, and North America), coming from different backgrounds and bringing unique skills to the table. 

Our founding team consists of two individuals working for technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both bring decade-long years of experience working with mission-driven, educational, and cutting-edge technology organizations:

• Srishti Sethi is a Senior Developer Advocate at an educational non-profit. She holds a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Rajasthan, India. 
• Suchakra Sharma is a computer scientist and advisor to multiple Silicon Valley startups. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Montreal and an M.Tech from the College of Engineering Pune, India.

In addition, we have two educators, one designer and one software developer in our team. Most of us either have grown up in under-served communities or have worked with/for them, so we know the communities' challenges first hand. Most importantly, every one of us believes in the cause, we are hard-working, dedicated, skilled in what we do, and every day feels like we are all in this together. 

As far as the diversity on the leadership trip is concerned, one of our co-founders identifies herself as a cis woman of color. She associates with a socially marginalized group growing up in a small town in a desert state of Rajasthan (India). For the initial team building, we are recruiting folks from our network to work with us. Before we onboard them, we try to understand their motivation, what they care about and how this opportunity can impact/uplift their lives. We tend to find people who are both passionate and humble

Within our core team, we have conversations often on how we can make our team as diverse as possible and who to bring next. For example, our next hire should be a woman, or someone working with the indigenous communities in Canada, or someone who is not Indian (as we have too many in our team right now). As founders, we ensure that other non-core team members have all the resources and support they need to do their work well. We are a tiny and tight-knit group working like a family supporting each other every day.

Financial–MIT Solve can help us access funding to improve and maintain the software behind our learning platform and carry on-ground research and activities around it. 

Human Capital–We are looking to learn from and grow our network of organizations doing similar work in this space in other parts of the world. We hope that through Solve, we will discover such organizations, meet/exchange ideas with them and possibly collaborate with them in the future. We have already started to notice a few organizations applying in the current round, with whom we would want to partner with!

Business model–We are also currently seeking more feedback on the strategic direction from experts in the social entrepreneurship space to guide our way forward (particularly how to raise funds as a non-profit) and help us keep on track. We look forward to connecting with mentors and coaches through Solve's platform. 

Financial–MIT Solve can help us access funding to improve and maintain the software behind our learning platform and carry on-ground research and activities around it. 

Human Capital–We are looking to learn from and grow our network of organizations doing similar work in this space in other parts of the world. We hope that through Solve, we will discover such organizations, meet/exchange ideas with them and possibly collaborate with them in the future. We have already started to notice a few organizations applying in the current round, with whom we would want to partner with!

Business model–We are also currently seeking more feedback on the strategic direction from experts in the social entrepreneurship space to guide our way forward (particularly how to raise funds as a non-profit) and help us keep on track. We look forward to connecting with mentors and coaches through Solve's platform. 

We want to partner with schools worldwide in underserved communities that lack access to creative learning resources. We also want to partner with educational organizations that focus on developing creative learning content but are missing out on tools that can help build richer learning experiences and thriving communities. Our solution can help fuel creativity in these communities, create a network of young creators and educators and strengthen the collaboration among them. Under the "equitable classrooms" umbrella, we are already seeing many STEAM-focused initiatives, with whom we could possibly partner. We also would be interested in partnering with PLIX, an MIT Media Lab initiative focused on STEAM-based activities for libraries in the US. 

Community members of all these organizations could become potential users of our platform. We plan to give them educator/staff roles on ZubHub, which allows them to answer questions, create activity groups, moderate discussions, and use ZubHub as an educator showcase and teaching tool. 

There is a lot more thinking required to design an ecosystem of tools, resources, and learning experiences for under-served communities and, most importantly, to sustain it. For example, to design activities, you need to support its availability in several local languages. A tool needs to be designed as such that it can be customized or made available for offline use, and even a non-tech-savvy user can find it easy to use. Several initiatives start from urban areas and then take a decade to reach the rural areas.  And, there are several such "for-profit" solutions that only more affluent kids can afford. Still, we are missing out on "non-profit" models to fuel creativity in under-served communities worldwide, as they are harder to sustain. That is why we think what we are doing is unique and different and can bring meaningful differences in so many lives.

Today, almost all educators worldwide agree that "creativity" is the fundamental skill that schools need to cultivate in their children. It helps develop a problem-solving mindset, which is required more than ever to navigate the complexities of the modern world, contribute to the holistic development of a child, grow in them the love for learning, and in helping them lead a fulfilling, meaningful, and connected life. Though access to creative education is an uncommon idea in remote areas, it is essential to bring it to everyone in modern times.

We will use the prize to scale our ZubHub platform to more geographic regions.

There is a lot more thinking required to design an ecosystem of tools, resources, and learning experiences for under-served communities and, most importantly, to sustain it. For example, to design activities, you need to support its availability in several local languages. A tool needs to be designed as such that it can be customized or made available for offline use, and even a non-tech-savvy user can find it easy to use. Several initiatives start from urban areas and then take a decade to reach the rural areas.  And, there are several such "for-profit" solutions that only more affluent kids can afford. Still, we are missing out on "non-profit" models to fuel creativity in under-served communities worldwide, as they are harder to sustain. That is why we think what we are doing is unique and different and can bring meaningful differences in so many lives.

Today, almost all educators worldwide agree that "creativity" is the fundamental skill that schools need to cultivate in their children. It helps develop a problem-solving mindset, which is required more than ever to navigate the complexities of the modern world, contribute to the holistic development of a child, grow in them the love for learning, and in helping them lead a fulfilling, meaningful, and connected life. Though access to creative education is an uncommon idea in remote areas, it is essential to bring it to everyone in modern times. 

We will use the prize to scale our ZubHub platform to more geographic regions.