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According to UNICEF, at least a third of the world's schoolchildren could not access remote learning during school closures; this means the digital divide affected 1.5 billion children worldwide. 
In Mexico alone, 257,146 students couldn't do distance learning due to the lack of access to the Internet, affordable data plans, and payment solutions. 

We created a business model that allows access to quality education in underserved communities by connecting educators and students to the Internet through a Satellite powered Community Wifi. We also created affordable data plans to make the Internet accessible to everyone. In communities with extreme economic conditions, we are running a pilot program to allow students to pay for the Internet with recyclable materials.

The lack of connectivity deprives individuals of access to an array of life-enhancing services and quality education in schoolchildren.

According to the World Economic Forum, half of the world's population doesn't have access to the Internet, and fewer than 1 in 5 people in the least developed countries are connected. Efforts to reach universal connectivity are on the way, but closing the digital gap is not just a matter of coverage; addressing other barriers such as affordability, digital skills, and payment solutions need to be part of the solution.

Our solution is composed of 3 key pillars:

• Provide internet coverage.
• Offer affordable data plans.
• Set up a point of sale within the community.

We start by making the Internet available in the community thanks to Satellite technology. Second, we affiliate with a local retailer where our future customers can go and purchase the wifi tokens, so they don't have to leave the community. And third, we create data plans starting at .25 cents so everyone can buy Internet in their local currency.

Our market is for everyone that knows how to operate a cellphone and lives in a community that qualifies for our service.

In Mexico alone, 11.5 million people don't have access to the Internet; they live spread out in more than 200k rural communities with as little as 40 inhabitants. For us to provide our service we need three key conditions:

• For the community to have at least 150 habitats
• Electric grid coverage
• No cellphone coverage

Considering the above, in Mexico, we can provide our service in 20k rural communities, which gives us a market size of 9.5 million people.

When we observed the needs of the community, we realized providing reliable Internet would allow them to the things that matter most — things like:

• Educational materials
• Healthcare tools and information
• Agriculture and business resources
• Keeping in touch with family and friends

We are the enablers. Thanks to our service and the understanding of the problem, we allow any digital solution and effort destined to help teachers and students happen. Our infrastructure is the backbone that will drive the impact all other actions intend to make. At a later stage, we will look to ignite the change in our communities and be the focal point to bring better education to our customers. 

We are at a growth stage because we already provide our service in 25 communities in Mexico; that means we provide Internet coverage to 10k rural residents. We have a proven business model, and we are looking to expand our operations in the coming months to reach 130k new rural residents living across 550 communities.

1. We integrate all the necessary components packed into one simple to use service. 
2. Thanks to the structure of our business model, providing Internet in these rural communities requires no capital expense from the customer side, something that is almost impossible through other technologies. 
3. We are doing a test pilot in 3 communities to allow our customers to pay for the Internet with recyclable materials by partnering with major plastic companies.

Our solution works as follows:
We start by installing a satellite Internet service in a local shop. 
Then we create an outdoor WiFi network broad enough to cover most of the community and connect the satellite link to the access point to backhaul the network and allow our users to access the Internet through the satellite link. 
For our users to have access to the WiFi, they need to purchase a token with the local retailer, where she will open her Express WiFi App and sell the data plan the users wish to purchase. Our affiliate retailer is responsible for operating the WiFi point of sale, and she keeps 10% of the monthly revenue. Back at our operations center, we monitor and resolve any issues and support our retailers in solving any problems they might have. 
Or retailer once a month is responsible for depositing the cash to our bank account, and this way we keep operating the service.

Satellite technology is provided by one of the major satellite companies globally, and the tool to manage and operate our sites is Express Wifi, provided by Facebook. They have many case studies across the world where other ISPs have deployed Express Wifi successfully. To further give evidence, we have our 25 operating communities, and lots of articles about this kind of solution have been written by projects in Africa and India.

We haven't encountered any major risk so far; we are aware of the responsibility to keep our customer's private information secure; that's why we comply with all Mexican laws and regulations to ensure we are doing the best we can to keep our customers safe. We are regulated by the IFT (Federal Institute of Telecommunications), and we already have the permit to operate under their guidelines. For the technical setup of the satellite service, we oblige under professional installation standards to avoid any hazardous situations for our technicians and our users.

• We currently serve 10k rural residents in Mexico
• In 1 year well serve 130k rural residents in Mexico
• In 5 years well serve 2.5 million rural residents across different countries in LATAM and Africa

"For at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, there was no such a thing as remote learning," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. "The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency. The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come." The pandemic exposed the huge digital divide that separates half of the world's population; that's why we decided to take action and help revert the economic effects that will come. 

Our business model allows schoolchildren to stay in school and communicate with their teachers; we plan to enable remote learning in our communities and give prioritized access to students, so no children fall behind in their education. We will achieve this goal thanks to the funding we are raising and putting it to work by directly opening more Community Wifi sites. 

The software we use to operate gives us a clear view of our users; thats the indicator that we are using to measure the growth of our project. In collaboration with our local affiliated retailers, we will provide access to all schoolchildren in our communities and monitor their activity in our wifi. We won't let money be a limitation; that's why we are working with other companies to allow for our wifi to be paid with recyclable materials, so no barrier will stop children from accessing the internet.

3 full-time staff and 6 part-time staff.

Ivan Ordaz our CEO has 8+ years of experience as a growth hacker and project manager managing teams developing digital solutions.

Alejandro Hinojosa our COO has 10+ years of experience developing network solutions in the ICT industry.

This is the second startup we have founded together, and we have shared goals and visions for the company.

When building our team, we've made sure we never judge or discriminate depending on any kind of gender, race, or sexual orientation. We are sure that a diverse team with people from all backgrounds will enrich our team and make us stronger. We hire out of talent, and we make sure we give the same opportunities to everyone that applies to work at co-co. We also decided to build our advisory board with diversity, so people from all backgrounds would be represented in our company. 

Working in collaboration with a program like TPrize Challenge will not only give us more support and better resources to learn and grow, but it will open a new floor of opportunities for us, the backing SOLVE will open more does for us, as it will give assurance to our investors and partners that we are on the right track. Those kinds of opportunities only come when working with institutions of your caliber. We want to leverage the relationship to create new possibilities and help the program's international footprint help us expand into new countries. 

From our experience raising capital, introductions are a game-changer; we look to do strong networking with SOLVE's network to help us raise our next rounds of capital. And the same goes with press and media; we have also found that when media companies publish an article about us, new doors and opportunities open (an example of that is this Business Insider article).

And at last, access to new technology and R&D departments would also be great, purchasing new equipment to test and do trials is a key component to help us provide the best possible service for our customers, so we hope that working with a program like SOLVE will help us gain better practices and knowledge on new technology.

We want to work with 2 types of organizations:

1. Companies that can help us grow our business and explore new revenue streams.

2. Strategic players who have experience doing the type of work we are doing can help us straighten out our learning curve.

For companies that can help us grow, we are looking for Point Of Safe Software companies with online and card payment solutions. Also, for companies with an e-commerce business model. At last, Fintech companies with experience creating products for people like our customers.

For strategic alliances, UNICEF is doing a great work creating information about the remote learning problem; leveraging their information could help us be more efficient when decision making. Organizations similar to theirs could be really beneficial as they would have great information to share—at last, labs or technology centers where new products are created and tested every day.