MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Wakanda Digital Girls´ High School

One-line solution summary:

Fight poverty with digital opportunity. We create a scalable prototype high school of digital excellence.

Pitch your solution.

Our project is targeting the secondary education bottleneck in rural and nomadic Turkana (Northern Kenya). The region´s challenges (98% of people live in extreme poverty) include low-productivity agriculture, lacking infrastructure, long distances to schools, lacking affordable secondary schools and a 50% drop-out rate (intensified by Covid 19).

Solution: A high school with full Kenyan curriculum but a focus on STEM, interactive teaching, additional ICT lessons and digital/paperless learning. School fees will be lower than Kenyan average and the school will grant scholarships. Furthermore, the school is part of a prototype village including an ICT campus for high school graduates.The campus is run by "Learning Lions", one of the founding members of Wakanda Girls´.

Global scaling would make advantage of digital means for education purposes worldwide. It would promote STEM training and, if scaled together with tertiary ICT education, revolutionize training for ICT jobs in poor remote areas.

Film your elevator pitch.

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What specific problem are you solving?

Our project is targeting lacking educational opportunities of rural youth, connected with joblessness, hopelessness, alcoholism, migratory pressures and urbanisation. In the region of our pilot project – Turkana – 97% of people live in extreme poverty, suffering from unemployment caused by poor (educational) infrastructure, limited access to markets, very few formal job opportunities. Turkana has particularly infertile soil that does not support sustainable agriculture. Yet, with around 900.000 inhabitants, Turkana holds an untapped potential of human talent with the great advantage of having internet access even in some of the most remote areas.

We deliberately chose Turkana for our pilot-project to test our concept against particularly harsh conditions, so that we can replicate it pretty much anywhere in the world, helping to better the lives of the global 800 million rural poor.

What is your solution?

We are constructing the self-sustained village of “Loropio”. Being a joint initiative between the Kenyan ministry of education and NGOs, the village will include our fully digital girls´ high school, where pupils aged from 14-18 years can learn and live on campus. The school will run the full Kenyan curriculum with a focus on STEM but modify the teaching approach with technology to create a paperless and interactive system. Every desk will have a PC integrated, providing access to additional learning materials. School fees will be lower than Kenyan average and we will grant scholarships to pupils from the most disadvantageous background.

Furthermore, Learning Lions´ ICT campus for up to 1000 professionals is being built in Loropio. Synergies will include international teaching volunteers giving lessons, connections with our women in tech network ("tech dadas"), high school graduates easily transitioning to tertiary ICT education and knowledge spill-over effects.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Target group: girls from impoverished areas with difficult or no access to eduction.

Direct beneficiaries: A student population of 360 girls will board at the facilities. They come from rural impoverished communities where the government is unable to make meaningful investments in education, required to achieve self-sustaining economic growth. Lots of children wouldn´t have access to education or children would be forced to walk long distances to access the nearest schools.

Current project outreach: The Wakanda Girls´ High School will not only serve the village of its location, Loropio, but take in students from the entire area in Turkana Region.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Enable access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings—including imaginative play, collaborative projects, and hands-on experiments.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

Our solution, which highly focuses on digital technology, aligns with the challenge´s requirements in the following way:

Engagement: peer interaction; encouragement of independent, semi-formal learning of digital skills through after-class meetings; cooperation with the ICT campus´ female tech network (tech dadas)
Quality learning in the world´s most remote area: using the internet to bridge the connectivity (lack of infrastructure) gap; teaching of digital vocational skills; establishing a MINT-lab
Safety: campus designed to ensure physical safety (guards, lockable rooms and toilets); female support network
Pedagogy: active encouragement of informal P2P learning; trained state teachers; international volunteer ICT teachers from neighbouring campus

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Lodwar, Kenia

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

Test location: Loropio prototype village, Lodwar, Kenya. Student intake from all over Turkana.

The project set-up(constructions, procurement, etc.) is already 90% completed. The pilot start (which was originally planned for the beginning of the year but was postponed due to Covid 19) is due soon.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Brizan Were

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:

https://www.learninglions.org/

If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:

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Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

A new business model or process that relies on technology to be successful

What makes your solution innovative?

Being a boarding school with a technology ecosystem in a self-sustained village, our project will profit from synergies and infrastructural advantage. This includes inspiration, knowledge spill-over, international teachers and most importantly the educational use of digital means and the internet. Furthermore, the village complex includes:

- Learning Lions ICT campus for up to 1000 ICT learners/professionals

- our own water system

- our own electric minigrid (30 KW)

- early childhood development centre

- a primary school (partially completed)

- a small industrial park including a fish and chicken food factory

- an agricultural greenhouse project

- a vocational workspace for illiterate adults

Wakanda Girls´ will be the first fully digital girls´ school in Kenya and a prototype learning-and-living project. It solves the problem of costs through lower fees and stipends and the problem of distance trough housing. Training in skills that facilitate revenue generation/continuing education after graduation (ICT, Stem).

The project could serve as an example for similar projects in Kenya and beyond. Combined with Learning Lions´ (tertiary ICT education and digital jobs) appproach, Wakanda Girls´ School of Digital excellence can mitigate poverty in remote rural areas around the world.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Software and Mobile Applications

Select the key characteristics of your target population.

Women & Girls
Children & Adolescents
Rural
Poor
Low-Income

Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?

1. No Poverty
2. Zero Hunger
4. Quality Education
5. Gender Equality
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequality
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
17. Partnerships for the Goals

In which countries do you currently operate?

Kenya

In which countries will you be operating within the next year?

Kenya

How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?

Current: 0 (excluding builders, etc.)

As of program start: 90/year * 3 (assumed multiplier effect) = 270

In 5 years: 90/year * 3 (assumed multiplier effect) = 270

How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?

Our impact measurement team collects data from internal and external sources:

- SMS survey send to ALL graduates regularly (longitudinal)

- online survey for new cohorts to get basic data and to compareprogress against

- baseline survey as comparison group

- performance data from training

- income data from Digital Lions

The following KPIs can be used:

- number of girls completing basic digital literacy classes at Wakanda High School

- number of digital literacy trainings held at Wakanda High School

- number of people trained in digital vocational skills

- number of graduates working at Learning Lions´s digital service agency or as digital freelancers

- average income (increase) of students after graduation

- net promoter score (graduates recommend program)

About Your Team

What type of organization is your solution team?

Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit

How many people work on your solution team?

Whole organization (including Learning Lions, excluding government teachers):

Full-time: 10

Part-time: 20

Volunteers: 20

How long have you been working on your solution?

2

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

The founding team dedicated substantial own funds, is committed long-term and all have spent time on the ground in Turkana and many other African contexts in private sector and development. Our local director and co-founder Brizan Were is a Turkana by birth; he worked as a teacher in the region previously, giving us great experience and credibility. Ludwig Bayern has 8 years of experience in development projects, including more than six projects in Kenya with a total budget of more than $1m (e.g. orphanage in Turkana and rainwater retention). He is an ICT autodidact and founded his first start-up when 18. Benedikt Wahler, is a renowned strategy consultant on inclusive and digital finance, leading >30 projects that reached >7m previously unbanked and built up the Sub-Saharan business for a top4 global strategy consultancy. This expertise and our approach have attracted other experienced professionals from IT, management, economics and development.

What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?

Our founder´s team includes professionals from three different continents and diverse cultural/language backgrounds. Brizan holds multiple Kenyan national prizes for his fight for human rights.

Our founder team includes women in key positions and former (female) students are increasingly taking over responsibility in our organization, both for the Learning Lions program as well as for our Wakanda girls´ high school of digital excellence.

Your Business Model & Partnerships

Partnership & Prize Funding Opportunities

Why are you applying to Solve?

The main reason we want to apply for Solve is the networks it can provide. Solve´s 9-months program will give us access to other people working to solve similar problems, to increased attention for our solution and to world-class mentoring and coaching.

It would be amazing what kind of credibility a cooperation with MIT could give our project (both Learning Lions and Wakanda girl´s school) and its graduates in the area of ICT/STEM.

Additionally, we hope that Solve can help us in the following areas:

1) Help with finishing the set-up and checking and improving the project

2) retention rate

3) Covering some of the running costs

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

Human Capital (e.g. sourcing talent, board development, etc.)
Business model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)

Please explain in more detail here.

Human capital: We need more people with a (digital) education background. While Kenyan state teachers will take over the "normal" part of the curriculum, we need expertise to continuously improve and adapt the courses´ digital elements. Additional team members could be 1) in our founders team or 2) volunteers. Thus, we need
help finding those.

In general, strategic support with our business model is very welcome. In the past, a consulting firm did pro-bono work for us.

What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?

MIT school of engineering and school of science: support with STEM lab at Wakanda girls´ school of digital excellence (planning, training, equipment)

Schwarzman College of Computing: curriculum support, joint projects

Besides the advantage of a professional cooperation, the signal effect of cooperating with MIT would be tremendeous.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The ASA Prize for Equitable Education? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GM Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GM Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion to advance your solution?

Wakanda girls´ high school of digital excellence is a secondary education project championing (STEM) education for girls in rural northern Kenya. The school features stem labs, reduced fees and a digital, PC-supported curriculum.

With the GM prize, we would 1) fund the running costs of the project for the next years (apart from state teachers´ wages; those are paid for by the government) and scale-up the student intake.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Innovation for Women Prize to advance your solution?

Our innovation is a holistic and digitally-enabled approach of economic and social empowerment of girls and women in poverty-stricken rural African regions. It builds on proven concepts of poverty-reduction (Graduation Approach, BRAC) and gender-lens interventions design (soft-skills training,mentoring, childcare provision, health care, education, self-help/organisation, and financial autonomy). We combine these with a unique digitally enhanced, stem-focused high-school curriculum and enhance impact further with outreach targeting girls in the region.

What we would do with the funding:

- Build and run daycare center for young mothers

- Girls protected living building

- Introduce additional all-female classes to boost the number of female graduates

- Additional funding for the Wakanda Girls´ school scholarship program

- Tech Dada Digital Literacy Courses for Wakanda Girls High School

- Quarterly self-defense & mental empowerment training workshop for women at ICTcampus

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?

No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GSR Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GSR Prize Prize to advance your solution?

Learnin Lions uses an innovative teaching curriculum for ICT skills powered through digital means and Wakanda girls´ high school of digital excellence runs a STEM-focused digital girls school. Turkana, our area of operation, is shaped by paralyzing poverty, lack of opportunities for the younger generation and a lack of infrastructure. By equipping youth with digtally enhanced high school education, context-based ICT skills and jobs, their income increases drastically and poverty is mitigated.

The sustainability of the approach (economically and ecologically) is ensured by powering the campus only by solar energy and by providing students with means to reach a higher-income with non-resource-intensive ICT jobs.

We would use the funding to scale up our teaching activities (train more students -> more graduates) and thus enable more people to earn a sustainable income, ultimately diminishing poverty in Turkana (and beyond).