RACHEL: Connecting Offline Learners to the World's Knowledge

A portable digital library for the 52% of the world's population without internet.

The internet provides an increasing wealth of educational opportunities, but 52% of the world's population cannot access them because they lack internet. As a result, these offline learners are falling behind, widening the education gap.

RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education & Learning) solves this problem by making the best educational websites like Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and much more, available anywhere. RACHEL is a rugged, portable offline server that can turn a graveyard of unused computers or tablets into a 21st century learning center with the push of a button.

RACHEL makes learning accessible and engaging, giving teachers an opportunity to personalize learning, and empowering students to work collaboratively and creatively, both inside and outside the classroom. We have already seen RACHEL transform classrooms in Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and dozens of other countries where our partners operate. 

As a result of using RACHEL, students are learning more, reading more, demonstrating greater enthusiasm for learning, staying in school longer, and graduating at higher rates. They are studying literacy, math, and science, and also using the information found on RACHEL to start businesses, increase their agricultural skills, improve health, and more. Teachers use RACHEL, and its accompanying teacher training guides and lesson plans, to transform classrooms from the chalk-and-talk lessons of the past to creative, collaborative, inquiry-based learning centers.

We have recently signed our first government partnership in Guatemala and launched new independent chapters in Tanzania and Ghana. We are ready to partner with industry, large-NGOs and governments to reach all offline learners around the world.

We are the only group modifying openly licensed, educational websites for offline use and making them freely available to all.

We also make content easy to access using RACHEL. Partners can choose to build their own RACHEL using our free software and content on a Raspberry Pi or another low-cost computer. Partners can also purchase RACHEL from us to make it easy to deploy. We offer ongoing support, new content, and software updates to all users for free.

Finally, our worldwide chapters provide locally relevant content, teacher training, and technical support. Together, these innovative approaches have resulted in widespread adoption of RACHEL.

RACHEL leverages three major shifts in technology, allowing us to build a powerful, low-cost server that brings a wealth of resources to offline areas: openly licensed content, the proliferation of low-cost computing hardware, and web browser technology and HTML5 standards.

RACHEL is a battery operated, full-stack web server and a wireless access point. When turned on, RACHEL creates a wireless hotspot which provides access to content through any client device web browser. RACHEL includes an admin panel with basic usage tracking, content management tools, and remote connectivity solutions.

We have four goals for the next 12 months: 

1. Integrate a better usage collection mechanism into RACHEL to enable our partners to run randomized control trial studies correlated to usage data.
2. Develop a more robust hardware platform capable of supporting a whole university or school-wide networks of 200+ students.
3. Add reliable and consistent documentation and support structure to RACHEL. 
4. Open another two chapters, likely starting with Zambia and Papua New Guinea, where we currently have dedicated volunteers.

In 3-5 years, we will:

1. Partner with governments where we have chapters to make RACHEL an official tool for public schools without access to reliable internet.
2. Add the ability to bundle data and provide micro updates to content via a smartphone connection, allowing users to access current information such as weather patterns, crop pricing, and healthcare.
3. Continue to expand our chapter program, adding 4-5 new chapters per year to increase availability of local, curriculum-approved content.

An estimated 500,000 offline learners use RACHEL. We have sold over 1,000 RACHEL servers to partners around the world, and many more build their own RACHEL using our free software. RACHELs are used in schools, libraries, community centers, orphanages and prisons.

Although people use RACHEL in myriad ways, initial impact studies on academic achievement have been promising. Two studies in Guatemala and Tanzania found that over one year, students using RACHEL increased math scores by one grade more, on average, than those without RACHEL. In Guatemala, schools reported that students doubled time spent reading after receiving RACHEL.

An estimated 500,000 offline learners use RACHEL. We have sold over 1,000 RACHEL servers to partners around the world, and many more build their own RACHEL using our free software. RACHELs are used in schools, libraries, community centers, orphanages and prisons.

Initial impact studies have been promising. Two separate independent studies in Guatemala and Tanzania found that over one year, students using RACHEL increased math scores by one whole grade more, on average, than those without RACHEL. In Guatemala, schools reported that students doubled time spent reading after receiving RACHEL.

We began making the earliest version of RACHEL software in 2009 and selling RACHEL as a hardware server solution to the public in 2013. Since opening our online store, RACHEL sales have grown approximately 30% per year. Based on this rate of continued growth (which we have already continued so far in 2018), we expect to reach an additional 150,000 offline learners in developing countries, refugee camps, and U.S. prisons in the next 12 months and a total of over a million users in three years.

RACHEL was originally built by a team of Cisco Systems engineers as a volunteer project, some of whom still serve on our board. Our U.S. team of three staff, along with our board, has deep technical expertise in network and systems engineering and web development. Our Executive Director previously specialized in disruptive technology investing at Norwest Venture Partners, and our Director of Strategic Partnerships specializes in education for international development and formerly worked with UNESCO. Our international chapters are founded by local entrepreneurs with expertise in technology, teaching, and international development.

Our approach is to keep costs low, and sell RACHEL at a small profit to sustain our operations. So far we have also received funding from several foundations and donors to invest in RACHEL product development and seed new chapters. 

Our chapter program is designed for sustainability: We use foundation funding to offer our chapters two years of operating funds. After two years chapters become independently sustainable through RACHEL sales, providing teacher training and technical support to schools and local NGOs for a fee, and fundraising. Guatemala, our oldest chapter, independently raised over $100,000 last year to sustain their operations.

So far, we have reached approximately 500,000 learners through mainly word of mouth, and spent years refining RACHEL based on user feedback. We are now ready to present RACHEL to major partners such as international NGOs and Ministries of Education for large-scale deployments so that we can reach the rest of the 3 billion people who lack access to the internet. We hope that Solve can help us engage key partners such as governments, industry experts, and international NGOs to ensure that all schools who need educational resources can access RACHEL.

Our strategy leverages in-country teams to curate local sets of digital content. But the concept of OER is even newer in many of these places, where copyright laws and restrictions are rarely understood or respected. We would love to work with Solve to identify key partners in localizing, translating, and/or creating appropriate content for developing countries.

Websites are getting harder to copy as they increasingly include interactive features. With Solve's help, we aim to leverage partner organizations who are creating educational content by building tools they can use to make downloadable versions of their websites.