Alokdhenu

The pedagogy system of our country Bangladesh has been solely dependent on textbooks from the very beginning. Our educational system has been emphasizing theoretical knowledge more than empirical learning. Moreover, the global pandemic has disrupted the whole education system.

Hence, we started Alokdhenu, to revolutionize our educational system and provide quality education to all through both our online and offline interactive platforms. We are integrating human libraries to form the first-ever decentralized educational hub that promotes our philosophy, "Learning through sharing". We are also creating small community-based educational hubs to help students acquire new skills with guided projects. Alongside that, we are aggregating university students who are passionate about teaching to learners can learn from them anytime.

Besides, If scaled globally, Alokdhenu will be able to bring a paradigm shift and ensure education for everyone.

The theoretical and textbook-based education infrastructure of our country is resulting in a shortage of manpower in applied fields and also vandalizing the potential of youth to think outside the box.

Cramming has now become a part of our pedagogy which is eventually decapitating our ability to think and imagine. This is leading our generation towards an unavoidable predicament and is reflected in our number of unemployed graduates.

It is not unknown to us that the pandemic situation has brought the educational platform online over the whole world. Yes, it has its' pros but no one is talking about the constraints it is imposing on our younger generation. Such difficulties are manifested in many interviews where the students apprised that this whole relentless online education is devastating their mental health due to lack of recreation brought out by interaction, not to mention the unstable internet connection and the unavailability of devices issues.

A report by "World Economic Forum" implicates that over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries are out of the classroom. So it is to be noted here that this complication is not only limited to our country but also the whole world.

We bring you 'Alokdhenu', a decentralized and unorthodox platform where we integrate human libraries to share knowledge and skills to refurbish the conventional didactics. We are going to arrange micro-libraries and inspire the youth to share their bookish knowledge while learning pragmatic skills. However, this will cherish their mindset to communicate and motivate them to think out of the box.

Alokdhenu will collect books from its donor to distribute in between the unprivileged. Also, book sharing and pitch will be highly prioritized during the sessions, which will enhance their presentation and collaborative skills. Our volunteers will motivate the youth through the demonstration of their individual skills while teaching empirically.

Also, we have created an online-based learning channel (Nerdy Andaa) where we will provide educational materials in our native language. Also, we want to involve our Alokdhenu volunteers to cooperate with us in building a huge online learning platform so that anyone interested in remote areas gets an opportunity to learn through both live interactions and online sources.

Finally, through our service, we are going to make sure the learning engagements of our society get enhanced in a fruitful way. So that learning becomes interactive and fun.

As we have stated earlier that our educational system is mostly focused on textbook knowledge which is why the people of our country can not think creatively or differently. This education system is turning their manpower into memorizing machines rather than a productive one. That is
the reason we are not only targeting our youth but also improving our
experienced ones. 

Children & Adolescents, the elderly, rural, peri-urban, urban, needy people are under our surveillance. Lack of awareness among parents about their children's education, lack of primary education, poverty, the inadequacy of government supervision, shortage of resources, risk-averse nature, not getting enough appreciation for creative work are the main reasons for being underserved. 

To answer these problems, we are presenting Alokdhenu as our solution. Alokdhenu is basically creating a human web by sharing and receiving books from one other while encouraging them to think creatively. Our organization is also trying to help people to gain basic life skills such as communication, cooperation, participation, self-management, decision making, creative thinking, self-confidence, positive behavior to deal effectively with the challenges of life. Our program will also help individuals to become productive and responsible. Therefore by helping them to think freely and innovatively we are empowering them to become young impact entrepreneurs to help not only them but also the whole world. On a large scale, we believe one day we will be able to bring a paradigm shift in the education system and inspire more people to become learners. 

Our vision is to bring the light of knowledge through environment-friendly education to marginalized children. We are introducing children to remote learning and creating content in Bengali for their easy understanding. Besides, we will organize various competitions and quizzes for them. These will increase their interest, broaden their knowledge. Moreover, our initiative will help them to develop their creative thinking and good manners, through sharing their knowledge with others. Besides, our skill-sharing workshops will help them to learn new skills. Thus, the physical and online platforms will be able to expand the spontaneous engagement of the learners.

We are working on this project for a year now. Our Online platform already has 74 videos with 25,361 views in total and about 900 subscribers.  We have created separate playlists for Robotics, Economics, Programming, HR, Biotechnology, and lots more! Besides, to test our physical aspect of the program we piloted Alokdhenu in BPATC to test our community-based sharing through learning initiative. We had around 20 kids and 66 books were shared only on the first day.  We are now planning to expand it to more communities. Thus. "Pilot" best describes the stage we are in now. 

Our solution mainly focuses on the decentralized education system. We are creating micro-human libraries through sharing books where students can learn by interacting with their peers.

This solution is innovative as it mainly focuses on remote learning education. In this pandemic situation, remote learning has become a necessity. Our project "Alokdhenu" mainly focuses on remote learning education which actually promotes an eco-friendly education system. It also gives the students a chance to think outside of the box and also we are focusing on the Montessori method. The education system of our country doesn't allow the students to think out of the box which actually hampers their creative thinking ability. They mainly focus on conventional education more. We are creating this pilot project for students to make them familiar with the remote learning system and also we are making supplementary videos for them in their native language so everyone could understand properly.

This pilot project actually a place where creative-minded people can share their ideas through reading books, magazines, etc. Here they can share their thoughts and inspire others to be creative and also it will promote them to think out of the box. This will be an eco-friendly learning platform. We will be arranging a fest called "Alokdhenur mela" every year which will increase the interaction among everyone and also inspire them to be creative and learn new things more and more.

In our remote education platform, we have about 900 subscribers, and in our social media, we have over 2000 followers. On average, around 1000 people are learning from our platform and our online content has been view 25361 times already. Furthermore, our pilot run for the physical event benefited 20 young learners of a community. Hence to evaluate our project we had set our KPI to 1000(offline and online ) learners for the first year but we were able to reach more than our KPI. Hence by the 5th year, we aim to reach our targeted KPI of 1Million  Learners.  And by our 3rd year of operation, we aim to reach India, Pakistan, and African countries too. We hope to create a world, one day, where we learn for the fun of it.  

We are focusing on the "Quality Education" and "Gender Equality" parts mainly from the SDG Plan. As we have mentioned earlier we are promoting the prototype or theory "Learning through sharing" we will be solving the quality education for all. Firstly we will create a central hub for our project from where students can borrow books and also in that center they will increase their interaction skills. This would lead them to learn new things and will make them think out of the box. This will help us to eliminate all discrimination in education as we are planning to do this project for every type of people in society. We are also focusing on universal literacy and numeracy. This project will help every underprivileged student to showcase their creativity level and also it will promote education for all. We are trying to eradicate this barrier through "Alokdhenu".

Secondly, we are focusing on the gender equality part. As we are focusing on educating every part of society, this will eventually help eradicate gender dominance in society. Girls and women will be educated and then they will fight for their rights. This will maintain a balance in society.

Full-time: 9

Part-time: 5

Total : 14

We are a team from diverse domains of knowledge with various sets of skills. Our team has members from Computer Science, Engineering, Literature, Economics, and even Textile engineering who are passionate about solving problems and dedicated to facilitating learners to grow even more. We have been making educational videos, podcasts for our community and at the same time arranging events to pioneer learning through sharing for a year now. Our team's skills in diverse fields help us to think beyond the conventional setups and formulate new ideas to push our initiative forward. 

Among our team members, Taher and Shadab(CSE, Undergrad) are expert software developers with immense skill in analytical problem-solving.  Nasiba(Economics Undergraduate) has been teaching young learners in her community for a long time now and is skilled in financial analysis. Adrita, a Literature student, is a bookworm and a creative writer alongside being an idea generator. Tahmid is skilled in robotics and is a very enthusiastic hardworking member. Illin is our  Strategic and business development whizz along with Promi who also is a textile engineering student.  And Srijan a CSE undergrad has been running another startup and skilled in strategic development, robotics, and teaching. With everyone's experience and bond with all the team members, we are helping the team to move forward. Therefore by inclusion, coordination, and diversity, we form the best team for our initiative. 

As our whole solution is based on the concept of human-libraries, it's a requisite for us to approach a diverse, equitable, and inclusive solution. 

We strongly believe that education and learning should be unconditional and irrespective of any limitations set down by humans ourselves. If you look at our solution from a meticulous perception, it should be unambiguous to you that we are not differentiating the people we are addressing through our solution in any way. 

Rather, we are doing the contrary by providing the learners with a platform where they can learn and procure knowledge through collaboration and cooperation. This methodology is even reflected through our motto "learning through sharing". Moreover, the seminars, sessions, and programs we hold, are comprised of learners from all walks of life. 

Besides that, one of our goals is to revamp our pedagogy from a competitive mindset to a collaborative mindset. Knowledge should not be confined to a person as it hinders the overall advancement of a nation. But, anything needs a medium to flow, and sharing of knowledge is no exception. This is exactly why we exist. We are the embodiment of this medium, and through this medium, we are trying to connect people regardless of their socio-cultural and educational backgrounds. 

We are applying for MIT Solve because me and my teammates always wanted to make changes to our education system. Education is the powerhouse of knowledge and a very major part to prepare a person for a bright successful future.

In Bangladesh, the education system is dependent on memorization and book-based study. We believe that the best way of learning is what you are gathering from your surrounding. An environment-friendly education, self-learning will help children to think out of the box. It also assists them to flourish their creative mind, develop their observation and imagination capability, broaden children's out knowledge and ensure good mental wellbeing. We feel that education and institutions should be a fun place for students, not a place of reluctance. For that reason, we are also focusing on co-curricular activities which will increase their enthusiasm and passion for enlightenment.

Last but not the least, our vision is to make sure that every child is getting the best way of effective learning. We are so eager to introduce our students to Montessori learning. Montessori method of learning fosters self-motivated growth for children and adolescents in all areas of their development -cognitive, emotional, social and physical. As we are student entrepreneurs, to expand and boost our initiative we need funding and mentorship and we believe SOLVE's experts will be able to provide us with that and evaluate our project so that we can improve even more to positively impact lives.

We are promoting STEM education both with the online platform and physical workshops. By providing a safe learning space and decentralizing the system we are developing a sustainable educational model.