Just Commit Foundation

Problem: According to Ghana's 2010 Population and Housing census, 25.9%, that is 4.5 million people are not literates. Inspired by our time and life spent teaching and mentoring urban poor students and teachers, we begun the Just Commit Foundation as a non-profit organization in 2017 in Ghana to leverage innovation to ensure youth and children development.

Solution: Therefore to make the world a better place, we provide educational resources such as story books, apps developed using MIT App Inventor and games to educate teachers and students in Basic and Senior High Schools to teach and provide skills in reading, creative writing, comprehension and grammar as well as STEM in Ghana. 

Scalabillity: Our solution can be scaled nationwide and in Africa by reaching 10,000 beneficiaries with our educational resources online through Libraries, schools, creating community hubs offline, our website, our apps and social media. 

Specific Problem: According to UNESCO's research on Literacy , more than 617 million children and adolescents are not gaining minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics (Fact Sheet No. 46 September 2017 UIS/FS/2017/ED/46) and are at risk of losing their livelihoods. COVID-19 has made these issues worse. UNESCO recommends motivating and training of educators and students and provision of educational resources such as ICT and books to solve these problems. 

Our Solution: Our inspirational business stories programme incorporates educational resources such as learning apps developed using MIT App Inventor; as well as games and inspirational business stories translated into local language to provide eco-entrepreneurship training for urban poor students and teachers to gain entrepreneurship skills in literacy and numeracy. 

The apps incorporate text-to-speech functions for beneficiaries to improve in reading and spelling through learning business English. Beneficiaries gain skills in numeracy through addition, subtraction, division and multiplication during calculating cost, income and profit. The inspirational  business stories includes questions and answers like  multiple choice, fill-in and short answers for business model to improve their skills in grammar, comprehension and creative writing.

MAIN ACTIVITIES:

1. Supervising teachers and students read the story, use the apps and the game to answer questions, brainstorm business ideas, develop business models and start running businesses using local tongue and English.

2. Monitoring and evaluation of the skills gained by collecting scores of questions answered from the story book from teachers as well as monitoring the profit and challenges solved in running the businesses.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Urban poor children and youth students and teachers.

Over 70% of beneficiaries are girls from urban poor homes.

The project aids beneficiaries to gain literacy and numeracy skills for home and school businesses to raise to support their families, urban poor schools and their educational needs. 

Through school exhibition, mentorship and visiting of home businesses, there is knowledge sharing between teachers, students and parents to help children run and own their school businesses or home businesses and help family businesses.

The project supports teachers to adapt their pedagogy through training them with the books and how to use stories, apps, games on tablets and laptops to well educate students to develop. 

The project facilitates personalized instruction since individual students are guided by the story books and apps to read and answer end of chapter questions for individual formative assessment .

The project communicate with students and their families in remote and hybrid settings through our online and offline platforms. Also, the programme has a PEER (Partners in Eco-Entrepreneurship and Reading) Module where the partners are either parents or peers. This promotes communication and the development of skills for teamwork and leadership.  

The Project has reached over 1,000 beneficiaries in only one community, Obuasi in Ghana who have tested our educational resources. 

Based on open-ended discussions with beneficiaries, we discovered that these urban poor children focused on selling in the streets because they were not good at numeracy and literacy. Through the programme, they channel their passion for selling to improve their skills in numeracy and literacy through learning business English and Business Math's and are able to sell better to make more profit. 

The program is innovative because it incorporates apps, games and inspirational story books translated into local languages.

Also, waste such as paper, plastic, fabric and e-waste generated are used to create new, cheap and reusable products for sale.

Basic and High School students learn how to develop models to establish, monitor and evaluate their business for growth.

Students are also exposed to Opportunities such as Competitions, Business Pitch, Scholarships, Travel, Interns and more.

The program has inspired a lot of students because it has helped partners schools to win four (4) International Business Competition Awards from competitions such as school Enterprise Challenge organized by the UK Charity, Teach A Man To Fish.

Benefeciaries have started over 50 businesses at home and school to earn a living to support themselves and their families.

We serve 1,000 beneficiaries and will serve 2000 and 5,000 beneficiaries in the next five years. 

Formative assessment is done by assessing the scores of end of chapter questions in the business stories. Summative assessment is done by assessing business models, business profits and skills gained for improvements. 

The formative and summative assessment have questions and answers in the following formats: Multiple choice, fill-in, short answers for business model which are used to assess the Literacy skills. Questions and answers in other formats such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division used in calculating cost, income and profit are used to access and improve numeracy skills. 

We have two (2) full time staff.

Also, we work with teachers of schools who serve as volunteers. 

Biography of Team for Inspirational Business Stories:

Janix K. Asare's passion originates from his BSc Environmental Science degree from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana.  He is the Founder and President of the Just Commit Foundation, an organization that incorporates Inspirational business stories, apps and games in books, on tablets and laptops to provide Eco-Entrepreneurship Training for the urban poor to take climate action to reduce poverty in Africa.  Janix is a YALI Fellow/Alumni of the US Embassy of State and an MBA student at UNICAF University. 

Eugenia A. Kessewaa holds Bachelor of Management Studies from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana.  She is the Vice President of the Just Commit Foundation, an organization that incorporates Inspirational business stories apps and games in books, on tablets and laptops to provide Eco-Entrepreneurship Training for the urban poor to take climate action to reduce poverty in Africa. Eugenia is also a YALI Fellow/Alumni of the US Embassy of State. Her vision is to create career opportunities  for urban poor females.

To ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion, we ensure that our leadership roles are not biased based on religion, race, gender, tribe and age or any issue. 

We are applying to Solve to gain unique recognition, exposure and networks to reach 10,000 beneficiaries in the next 5-10 years. 

We need partners or support for Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.) to improve our software and hardware to always meet the needs of 21st century and beyond.

We would love to partner with any potential partners  which include organizations, MIT faculty or initiatives, or Solve Members who would help improve our software and hardware to always meet the needs of 21st century and beyond. 

The project qualifies for Innovation for Women Prize  because over 70% of beneficiaries of our project are girls from urban poor homes in an HIV/AIDS prone community  (prevalence rate of 5.2 %) who are having access to tablets and apps to gain skills in literacy and STEM as well as employability skills to support themselves and their families.  

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