eFlow Education

eFlow is a cloud based online learning platform that utilizes an interactive and educational smart chatbot that enables quality online learning for underserved communities and refugees with very low digital resources or digital skills. eFlow enables full course learning, delivery and tracking on instant messaging apps like WhatsApp ensuring a frictionless and highly accessible learning channel while incorporating the latest techniques in adaptive and interactive learning using machine learning. A recent study shows that a very large number of people in underserved communities have access to at least one smartphone and with eFlow, this is sufficient for them to start learning online. With our solution we can enable learning for more than 400 million learners around the world that education is the best way to guarantee for a better future.

Despite all the educational content and platforms out there, underserved communities are not able to utilize these platforms and consume the content and learn online as these platforms and content are not created for these communities in mind. According to a recent study by UNICEF, it is approximated that more than 460 million learners were not able to continue learning online when COVID-19 pandemic hit due to different challenges like weak/no access to internet connection, no access to laptops and low digital literacy skills. Source: https://data.unicef.org/resour...

eFlow specializes in delivering content as messages on various messaging apps including WhatsApp.

This includes taking already existing courses and converting them into short videos, images and voice notes that learners receive messages individually through our educational chatbot. Learners are able to reply back with text, emojis, images, videos or voice notes. Trainers are able to track learner's performance and bypass the chatbot to communicate directly with learners.

eFlow focuses on (4) key areas:

Conversational Approach: Our learning approach preserves the human element in online learning by utilizing a human-centered personalized approach through our cloud based chatbot.

Frictionless & Highly Accessible: Content on the platform is delivered directly on popular instant messaging apps like WhatsApp which guarantees no friction and high accessibility.  End users do not need to learn how an app works or download anything extra. All they have to do is just talk to our chatbot on WhatsApp to begin learning.

Interactive Transparent Links: Create interactive links for leaderboards, activities and other pages that can be sent over the platform and shared with learners without the need to login. 

Adaptive learning: Educational chatbot adapts to different learning styles and sends different messages based on the learner’s performance.

Our platform targets 3 main segments:

1. School students with weak access to internet, low digital literacy to enable them to take advantage of blending learning.

2. Aspiring entrepreneurs working on small local business in their communities we support them with business and marketing micro learning courses and connect them with micro financing opportunities.
 
3. New parents, we help them in parent micro courses and resources to raise their children properly.

We work with different NGO's targeting the 3 main targets above through our platform. 

When COVID-19 hit, we discovered a significant gap in the way education was being distributed across marginalized communities across the world.

Problems included:

• weak internet connectivity

• poor digital capacity

• no access to laptops

Organizations who also support large education initiatives around the world faced challenges:

• Communicating  vital learning content and awareness info

• Limited resources and manpower

This allowed us to tackle the challenges facing learners and organizations by providing them with:

• Easy to use platform that allows teachers to easily manage & track learners on WhatsApp, Telegram or Facebook Messenger 

• Integrated Chatbot that communicates directly with the learners

We are currently working with (7) different NGOs who are utilizing our platform with over 10,000 learners in 3 different countries (Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq).  As well as piloting with additional organisations in South Africa and Lima, Peru.  Furthermore, much of the feedback we have received up until this point from teachers and learners has been very positive, and we are constantly making updates to the platform based on their feedback.

To add, with the success we have seen in the countries that we are currently operating in, we are now growing to reach other regions of the world.  In fact, we recently established a key global strategic partner who has a big presence in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.  This partnership will allow us to leverage the well established relationship ships they already have in the target countries we are looking to penetrate.

What makes eFlow such an innovative solution is that we built it to directly address a specific challenge and struggle that was and still is affecting NGOs and organizations abroad. These entities are the ones who focus on developing and executing education initiatives for less fortunate students in underserved communities. In fact, when the COVID-19 Pandemic began in March, we discovered that there was a huge gap that was created when schools shut down, and many organizations and teachers did not have a proven and effective strategy for online learning. In turn, these organizations and schools began trying to leverage WhatsApp and other messaging platforms to “get by'' but found these approaches to be ineffective and sometimes even chaotic.  However, with our platform, organizations can optimize and improve the way information is being sent and received from their learners.

• Conversational approach: Our learning approach preserves the human element in online learning by utilizing a human-centered personalized approach through our cloud based chatbot.

• Frictionless & Highly accessible: Content on the platform is delivered directly on major instant messaging apps like WhatsApp guarantees no friction and high accessibility. No need to learn how an app works, just talk to our chatbot on WhatsApp and start learning.

• Interactive transparent links: Create interactive links for leaderboards, activities and other pages that can be sent over the platform and shared with learners without the need to login. 

•  Adaptive learning: Educational chatbot adapts to different learning styles and sends different messages based on the learner’s performance.

Currently we are serving around 8,000 learners, in a year we will be on track to double our numbers to 16,000 learners by working with 10 different organisations. In 5 years, we should be able to reach up to 500,000 learners with the right partners.

We are currently measuring the below indicators:

1. Number of learners: ~8,000 to date from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq

2. Number of completed courses: +30 courses completed by different learners

3. Course completion rate: 35% - 85%

4. Learner improvement (pre-post assessment scores)

10 full-time members

Bassel Jalaleddine, Founder, BE. Computer Engineering, +6 years of experience in EdTech

At the age of 14, Bassel self-learned programming. Following his passion for education and technology, at the age of 22, Bassel co-founded his first edtech startup www.cherpa.io scaling into different countries and acquiring several awards and recognitions. While working in edtech with different organisations and scaling his venture, he discovered a significant gap in online education for marginalised communities and founded www.eflow.app to make quality education accessible for all.

Ghadeer Taki, Instructional designer, MSc. Educational Technology

Ghadeer combines her many years of experience from working with various educational institutions in a wide variety of courses and content with the knowledge she gained during her masters’ degree in Educational Technology.

She has always had a strong passion for helping learners, and excels in delivering complex topics in a smooth, pedagogical and engaging method that follows modern educational frameworks and standards.  

Samer Bawab, Business Development Manager, BAA

Samer brings over 10 + years of software sales and strategy consulting experience working with some of the biggest companies in the USA and across the world. This includes quickly and effectively understanding  the unique and complex challenge his clients face, and applying the best practices and solutions to help solve them.  

As someone who has always been passionate about helping others and understanding the importance of education, he channels that energy through his work by leveraging technology to create a better online learning experience for students in marginalized communities.

Each team member brings their own experiences working directly in the education space, and have personally seen and felt all of the challenges and struggles facing so many school systems and organizations around the world.   One important goal that we all share is the motivation, focus, and determination to make a difference for learners across the world regardless of their social or economic status.

Our leadership team comes from various backgrounds, Bassel and Ghadeer come from the South of Lebanon, while Samer comes from a half hungarian half american background residing in the capital of Lebanon, Beirut.

This gives the team a unique outside looking perspective when it comes to solving the unique and different challenges we are facing with our clients.  To add, other leadership team members come from different cities and regions in Lebanon and include teachers, technologists, business consultants, and education content creators.  This combination creates the perfect synergies for creating and delivering the most value to the clients we serve and the learners we help.  

Lastly, we strongly believe in celebrating small and big wins that are achieved by each individual team member or as a group here at eFlow. This includes frequently congratulating and highlighting the positive feedback we get from organizations and from the learners themselves.  Each and every person has something valuable to contribute, and it's important to ensure we are creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable and shares their ideas without fear of punishment or reprise.

We would love to be part of this community of social enterprises to expand our connections with like minded partners that we can work with to increase impact.
We are also looking for mentorship and advice from experts from the MIT network

In order for us to scale, exposure in media and conferences and relevant partnerships are key for reaching our targets and increasing our impact.

We need support in scaling by partnering with different organisations dealing with learners in underserved communities in different countries.

We are also looking for exposure to be able to raise funds to scale our initiative and increase our impact.

Strong partnerships with the donors and foundations that support the NGOs and their efforts are critical.  These organizations include the World Bank, USAID, UN, and other international foundations can refer us to NGOs and   In addition, we see a good match with organizations that focus on equity.

Potential partners that could also add value to our efforts would be a large telecommunication corporation.  For example, these organizations have a number of CSR and SDG goals that they need to fulfil.  In turn, a telco could sponsor the eFlow platform and provide it to the beneficiaries within those city, country, or region by offering data packages and bundles as well as cover our licensing costs. 

Pearson & McGraw Hill: As one of the two biggest publishers and e-content creators of the world, this would be an ideal partnership for eFlow for a number of reasons.  First, they can provide us with important digitized education content that we can add to our platform and offer to the marginalized communities that we serve. This will also take a load off the education content creation team, and allow us to focus on developing the platform and producing a positive experience for teachers and learners.  Secondly, eFlow can become the vehicle or channel that can take McGraw Hill’s content and put it into the hands of the underserved learners.  As there are millions of children that could benefit from these educational materials and receive them easily on their mobile devices.  

Our solution has directly targeted and helped syrian and palestinian refugees in the MENA region. We are helping the refugees to learn online despite the challenges they are facing. Courses we delivered to refugees include entrepreneurship and micro-financing to help them establish themselves, create their own local business and advance in their life. The fund will help us to expand our reach to more refugees in the MENA region and support them through education to create a sustainable life and get immersed into the society.

We are currently working on 2 programs targeting women, First is for educating new moms in underserved communities how to deal with their children through micro-courses on our platform and chatbot. The second, is for supporting women in creating their local business and providing them with micro-financing through our partners.

We would like to increase our impact and target more women with a wider range of content ranging from entrepreneurship, to parenting to STEAM courses and help them advance in their lives through education.

We are currently leveraging the power of AI and more specifically machine learning in chatbots to help educate learners in underserved communities with technological challenges. Machine learning helps us to personalise education journeys for learners as well as automate learning but keep the human touch for a more engaging and productive learning experience.

The prize will help us to update our AI model for a more engaging, adaptive and personalised learning experience for the learners and mostly in underserved communities.

The fund we also help us utilize AI in our analytics and reporting mechanisms for a deeper understanding of beneficiaries on the emotional and social well being so we can better support them.