ED UP

Currently, approximately 1.725 Billion kids are at home attending classes online, due to the ongoing pandemic. While this has ensured that their school classes and academic year do not go in vain, it has certainly put a stop to their holistic development. Here, ED UP steps in by providing quality education to kids and even teachers looking for teaching resources, in any field of study. For example, many kids are interested in Gaming. Now, gaming or eSPORTS specifically, is a viable career path, but many times, people do not have the required skills to improve their gameplay and excel at the global level. ED UP steps in here, by providing tutorials, blogs to excel their gameplay. If this solution is scaled to a global level, it will help thousands of aspiring eSPORTS athletes achieve their goals. This is one example, there are many disciplines to focus on.

ED UP aims to bridge the gap between study and extracurriculars. As per UNICEF's Monitoring Report, approximately 825 Million kids are currently affected out of the initial 1.725 Billion Kids due to the ongoing pandemic. While the study can be done online, with many online platforms like Khan Academy. YouTube, available, the same is not true for extracurriculars. Many students are not able to pursue extracurriculars, especially those who belong to low-profile economic backgrounds, which still do not have access to the Internet, or others, who are not able to find any online resources. ED UP steps in here and fills the gap by being an online platform that polishes a person's hobbies into skills. 

The solution here is to build an infrastructure that combines both offline and online learning. Firstly, we will analyse the areas where the issue is prevalent the most. Then, we will assess the pandemic situation there. If conditions allow, we will be partnering with local people of those areas, who will then be using our study materials and teach them, which will be created by people, best in the field. All the relevant content will be provided to those volunteers in hard copy, who will then be using it to teach the kids there for free. The partnership process will be done by our HR Staff representing those areas. We will also have Video, Blogs, related to the field of study available on our website, for those who have access to the internet. For those communities, who do not have access to the Internet, we plan to introduce internet connectivity there, by providing them access to technologies like Wi-Fi, with the help of the respective governments. After teaching, all the volunteer educators will have to upload a brief report by the students, to ensure transparency in our project. Our staff will also perform surprise checks for the same.

We are basically working to improve the lives of all kids affected by the pandemic, with more focus on lower-income and remote communities. The solution is not just to improve their lives during the pandemic, but thereafter too. Remote communities do not have access to the Internet, which has been termed as a basic right by many countries, which undermines the holistic growth of their kids. Through this solution, they will get access to the Internet, better facilities, they will come out of their environment and engage with people from all over the world. All of this will help them to grow as a Human, who has the skills which need to be applied to the real world, not just study.

The Pandemic has affected education, which not only includes study but also extracurricular activities which are an important part of a kid's life. This solution will ensure that this precious time of their life does not go into vain. The target populations have been the most affected by the pandemic, so we are providing them with a platform to ensure that their access to education is not at all hampered. This solution will reintroduce them to hands-on learning, collective and shared thoughts, the bond between a student and teacher, and much more. 

We have formed our organization recently and are currently in the building phase of the project. We are hiring members (mostly student volunteers themselves) through RoundPier, building the website, brainstorming and creating the content, and much more things are being done at the back-end of our organization. Once, we are all set, we will begin the rollout immediately.

What makes ED UP innovative is that it focuses on two things:

1. The hybridisation of Education: Both Online and Offline Education have their pros and cons. While offline education ensures hands-on learning, collective and shared experiences, student-teacher bonding, etc., it does not provide the student with a diverse environment to gain knowledge from different sources. Whereas, online education ensures that the student learns from different sources and gets to know more about the world by seeing it himself/herself through videos, blogs, articles, etc. But, it comes at the cost of the qualities of Offline Education like collective and shared experiences, hands-on learning, etc.
2. Suitable for all disciplines: ED UP focuses not only on school subjects, but also after-school subjects, or extracurriculars, like Art, Dance, music, Gaming, programming, Animation, to name a few.  This ensures that people who have certain hobbies like Gaming do not feel dejected from not being able to find any reliable and trusted sources.

Currently, we are in the Prototype Phase of the solution and hence, it does not serve anyone for now. We, however, are hiring volunteers from all over the world and will begin rollout in 2 months. In one year, it is expected that we serve at least 500 people, for our solution. In 5 years, we shall try to make this solution serve about 50000 people.

We are currently drawing upon support from our existing volunteers about how we should improve, and scale up the recruiting process, and what should be our next step. We plan to introduce a 'Suggestions' feature when the rollout shall begin, which will give us comprehensive data about how we are engaging with the audience? What are their needs? How are our goals consistent with our practices? etc.

Full-Time Staff: 5 people

One of the main ideas to form the organization came from our Founder President and CEO, Divit Setia. Looking around in his community, he would find parents just telling their children to study, and even the children were now just studying and ignoring the extracurricular activities. But he was not one of them, he used to play video games, as it was his hobby, but his parents refused this and wanted him to study, with the gaming days be reduced to 2 in a week from the whole week. This led to the birth of the idea that parents should not stop their children from pursuing passions. Study is not the only thing that matters. Personality Development is a big factor too. This was the founding stone of our organization. Also, he was interested in the way organizations were bringing innovations by learning and then collaborating with like-minded people to produce the best possible output and the fact that all successful companies were not founded by one person but co-founded by many people. That is the reason it is part of our motto: Learn. Innovate. Collaborate. Repeat.

Our organization currently has 7 people from India and the United States. We are currently recruiting on RoundPier, which has students from all over the world. Also, the current staff represents many regions. Four are from North India, One is from South India, One is from the United States. This ensures an inter-mixing of cultures and is an amazing way to gain knowledge about a specific culture rather than sticking up to a book and reading it. Practical Experiences are way better than Theoretical Experiences. The idea to reach a global audience and interact with them tells about our mission to form a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where people of all races, colours, gender, communities, come together and share their experiences, and gain knowledge about each other's cultures.

It was just a few days before that I heard about it. I was already, sort of struggling to build my organization, and start the rollout, but turns out that is quite difficult for a young, teenage entrepreneur to escalate his project quickly. Then, I visited the website, read the mission, its objectives and came to know that this is the program for me. There are many reasons, but the primary reason is, that if I get selected, I shall learn to expand my business, get to know about its functioning and above all, a hands-on experience. I will be running my business while learning about how to scale it up through this program and nothing is more important than a Hands-On experience to something. You can learn about something, memorize it, but you will not understand it unless and until you apply it to the real world. Another season was financial sustainability, which is a necessity for a newly-found business, with high aspirations. But, it is secondary and maybe even tertiary, because if I and my team shall learn the skills, we may even devise our new methods to earn money efficiently, and what is more exciting for an entrepreneur to earn money by applying his knowledge? Hence, I am applying here, to gain access to top-quality education on business fundamentals, rather than just seeking financial support.

All the above-selected support areas are explained below:

• Human Capital: We are currently looking for volunteers and staff to help create study materials, videos, write blogs, cover news, etc. so that all this work can be done at the back-end before we begin the rollout.
• Technology: We are looking for Web Developers to build and maintain our website, so that all the material which is going to be created at the back-end can be posted on the website as soon s it goes live.
• Public Relations: We are also looking for HR/Marketing Interns to promote the organization and work out with the Application Process for applying to our organization, and email applicants of their decisions, etc.
• Financial: As we are a Hybrid organization (Profit+Non-Profit0, with no clients as of now, we will require Financial Assistance to some level to support the organization.

At ED UP, Collaboration is the founding pillar. We believe that no idea can be successful without taking help from you partners, investor, colleagues, etc. Hence, we would love to partner with organizations through Solve. Currently, we are thinking of partnering with MIT Faculties, as they have a rich experience in this field; Initiatives and Partners of Solve working towards creating a better business environment and helping out in this noble cause. We do not have any specific names in mind, but would love to partner with whosoever is assigned to us, if we qualify for the next round.

The ASA Prize focuses on child development and, in particular, Career Development. this is what our mission is. We want to develop the child's hobbies into skills alongside giving him/her a quality education. Bith of this will ensure that he/she chooses the right career path without coming under the pressure of someone. To advance our solution, we shall use the prize money towards further investments into reaching out to more and more remote communities, helping them thrive and grow to their full potential, providing them Internet Facilities, creating more and more quality content, etc.

Refugees are one of the remote communities, whom we shall be educating as they too do not have access to the Internet ad Quality Education. They also deserve to be making a change in this world. What's their fault if they are displaced from their homes due to the enmity of their countries with other countries? They didn't do that, it was some extenuating circumstances that forced the countries into wars, or such situations. Hence, they deserve to get access to education. If granted the prize, we shall use it exclusively for refugees by providing them with the quality education, they might not have gained, due to their circumstances, and internet connections to facilitate them in our program, and inculcating their long-lost hobbies into them again, and turning them into skills.

At ED UP, education means both scholastic education and co-scholastic education. We will be providing students STEM education, as well as extracurricular education, along with education on other subjects. STEM is something that has the power to change the world. Hobbies that turn into skills, if applied with STEM, can accelerate the development of this world to a never-seen-before scale. If given the prize, we shall use it to develop our STEM courses and increase our experiments' scale, for example, we shall inculcate more complex and diverse experiments, which shall promote hands-on learning, the beast ever learning experience.

At ED UP, our mission is to provide quality education in any field of study, to turn hobbies into skills, to apply those ills with the gained education and work experience, and make the world more innovative and sustained. These would then increase the standard of living of remote communities and alleviate property, which would increase their Financial Status, and they would be able to lead a happier life. If granted the prize, we shall use it to develop the complexity of our STEM experiments and promote hands-on learning which is the best ever learning experience. Also, we will be increasing investments towards remote communities, like better content, videos, internet connections, etc.