MAVIS COMPUTEL

The growing number of out-of-school children in Nigeria (13.2million – highest in the world), especially in the north, not only limits the country’s economic growth, but also makes the children susceptible to recruitment by armed terrorist groups, child marriage, early pregnancy and other forms of exploitation and abuse (UNICEF).

Our Mavis Talking Books™ solution (digital pen and accompanying digitized paper books following the national curriculum) helps our partners (governments, donor agencies, NGOs) deliver cost effective, quality basic education to out-of-school children (free of charge) in their mother tongue/local languages even in communities where teachers are not available. Earlier interventions achieved over 46% improvement in learning within 18 months.

In line with the Alternate School Program of the Federal Government, using our Mavis Talking Books™ (MTB) technology, we will be able to cost effectively educate One Million (1,000,000) Out-of-School Children in Nigeria in the safety of their homes/communities by 2025.

• Increasing number of out-of-school children (OOSC): From 10.5million in 2015 to over 13.2million in 2019. This number has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Huge learning infrastructure deficit in Northern Nigeria: Over 5,000 classrooms have been destroyed in Borno state alone (in North Eastern Nigeria). New infrastructure can also be destroyed. Therefore, building new infrastructure (classrooms) might not solve the problem.To reach the 13.2million OOSC alone the conventional way, Nigeria would require additional 330,000 classrooms and teachers, at government’s 40:1 pupil to teacher ratio.
• Poor performance of public schools: About 80% of children in North Eastern Nigeria who completed primary school cannot read and comprehend a simple sentence either in English or their local languages.  
• Poor quality teachers: About 21,780 out of 33,000 teachers failed Grade 4 English and Math tests administered to test their competence by the Kaduna State government (a state in northern Nigeria).
• Insecurity: By the end of 2018, more than 2,300 teachers had been killed due to insurgency in North Eastern Nigeria. That human loss aggravates the lack of available education to children across the region.Some parents in Northern Nigeria prefer not to send their children (especially girls) to school because of kidnapping.

Our solution involves leveraging easy-to-use technology (Mavis Talking Books™) to solve the problems of delivering quality basic education to the numerous out-of-school children (OOSC) in Nigeria and other developing countries cost-effectively, in the language that the learner understands.

Mavis Talking Books™ consist of Mavis Talking Pen™ (a digital pen) and Mavis Books™ (accompanying digitized paper textbooks). A user turns on the Mavis Talking Pen and taps on pictures or texts on pages of the Mavis Books to follow the lessons (with audio in a language that he/she understands). Subjects to learn can be English, Mathematics, Science, etc. 

With the Mavis Talking Books, children can learn on their own at home, in small groups in community townhalls, sitting under trees or in tents in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Where there are no schools, no good teachers or teachers are reluctant to go to the community due to poor living conditions & insecurity, where parents do not want to send their children to school for sociocultural reasons, fear of kidnap, infrastructural deficits (lack of or poor toilet facilities for the girl child), the Mavis Talking Books can be deployed to bridge the education access and quality gap.

OUR TARGET POPULATION:

• Out-of-school children aged 5 - 17 years living in Northern Nigeria without access to education due to poverty, insecurity and sociocultural barriers
• Children aged 5 - 17 years going to public schools with the absence of good teachers

OUR APPROACH

Program Design & Stakeholder Engagement: Before an intervention, we engage key stakeholders (community leaders, parents, education officials, NGOs in the area) to discover the specific learning needs of the community, including preferred language(s). We also ensure that about 50% of the beneficiaries are girls.

Training: We select facilitators from the community and train them to guide the learning process.

Assessment: Baseline to End line assessments are conducted to measure learning gains using standardized tests.

Learning: Children can learn as individuals (self-paced learning) or in small collaborative groups with the assistance of facilitators or their parents (since the medium of instruction is in the local language). Portable solar kits are provided to ensure uninterrupted learning.

Monitoring and Evaluation: The project team conducts periodic visits to monitor the learning process during the program.

Our Mavis Talking Books technology ensures all primary school aged learners have access to quality, safe, and equitable learning environments by taking learning to their homes in a language that they understand.

The long-term effects of the lockdowns have not been fully evaluated.The beauty of our solution is that it can help children from low-income families  who have lost time due to the pandemic and school closures to catchup, as the Mavis Talking Books can be used for remedial learning.

Mavis Talking Book Literacy & Numeracy Projects funded by:

• US Embassy in Nigeria - 2017
• FCDO (previously DFID) – 2018
• Borno State Government (North East – Nigeria) – 2019
• And others

Over 152 schools reached

Children Reached: 19,000+ (Out-of-school and In-school children)

School Owners & Teachers Trained: 410+ 

Adult learners Reached: 2,000+

50+ Mavis Talking Books™ developed to date for:

• English with Phonics (Levels 1 – 4)
• Hausa-to-English with Phonics (Level 1)
• Mathematics (Levels 1 – 4)
• Basic Science (Level 1)
• Languages (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, French, Arabic, Spanish)
• Storybooks
• Rhymes Books
• Health Books (on Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality, COVID Prevention)

Our solution is unique and innovative because it supports using technology and mother tongue medium of instruction to:

• Deliver self-paced, learner-centred education. This encourages children to progress at their own paces – with or without teachers.
• Enable small group participatory and collaborative learning.
• Enable learning without the need to build new schools/classrooms to reach out-of-school children.
• Enable parental engagement in their children’s learning.
• Deliver better learning outcomes for out-of-school children.
• Enable governments and donor agencies to deliver quality and cost-effective basic education to out-of-school children.
• Reduce the high risk associated with assembling children in unsafe environments.
• Support delivery of differentiated and multigrade learning in communities.

Current reach: 19,000+ children

1 Year: 200,000+ children

5 Years: 1million+ children

• Number of project enrolled children retained in the non-formal learning centres or home learning clusters from previous year
• Proportion of project enrolled children passing assessment tests in literacy and numeracy at the end of each year
• Numbers of previously out-of-school children enrolled in formal primary school
• Number of learning facilitators receiving mentoring support on effective teaching methods and lesson planning 

Full time: 11

Contractors: 25

Our team is made up of individuals in the following areas:

•Multilingual Experts

•Educators

•Translators

•Software Developers

• Program Design & Project Implementation Experts

•Graphic Experts

•Proofreaders

•Voicing experts

•Song, story & rhyme writers

Mr. Samuel Ucheaga (with over 34 years experience in the telecoms and edtech sector) is the CEO/Co-Founder of Mavis Computel Ltd – developers of the Mavis Talking Books™ technology and Mavis Education Model™. Supervised the rollout of the first GSM Switch installed in Nigeria while at M-Tel (was once acting MD/CEO of M-Tel). University of Nigeria (UNN) Graduate of Electrical/Electronic Engineering

He was the Project Manager for a 2018 UK Aid funded intervention to reach over 7,000 children in low-cost private schools in Lagos, Nigeria using the Mavis Talking Books™ technology to improve learning outcomes in Literacy and Numeracy.

Chizaram Ucheaga works (with over 14 years) in the educational technology space as the Co-Founder/Head, Corporate Strategy & Operations at Mavis Computel Ltd. 

•Supervises the deployment of the Mavis Talking Books™ and Mavis Education Model™ for various donor and government funded education projects across Nigeria.

•Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO) Graduate of Electrical/Electronic Engineering.

•Lagos Business School trained (HIDAP).

•Member Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

Awards won:

• Winners of the 2017 British Council ELTons (English Language Teaching Innovations) Award
• Most innovative SME from the Nigerian Pavilion at the United Nations’ ITU Telecom Worlds Award 2017 (South Korea)
• 2018 Innovating Education in Africa Expo Winner (African Union)
• VivaTech 2018 Africa@Tech Best Startup 2018 from Nigeria (France)

We have weekly meetings where everyone openly and freely airs their views on how to advance our education solutions for reaching out-of-school and in-school children. We are equal opportunity employers. Our team is made 54% of our staff is female.

We provide flexible working hours for our team to enable them do their best work in a stress free manner.