O-lab: Empowering Indigenous Learners

Fundación El Origen is an NGO with the aim of eradicating the overwhelming gap to opportunities by providing accessible and inclusive digital learning for underrepresented communities. Our project works by creating partnerships with communities, to reach youth and provide them with the support needed to further education.

To achieve this goal, we have developed O-lab: the learning app that is bridging the digital divide. It functions offline, in low cost devices and has a virtual assistant that translates the content to indigenous tongues.

El Origen empowers youth to become leaders in their communities, by providing complementary education, STEAM, and entrepreneurship courses co-created with quality educational institutions to guide youth to access quality education, increase future skills and develop projects for their communities.

By maintaining constant dialogue and training with communities where O-Lab is implemented, we are closing the digital illiteracy and guiding them to develop 21st century skills to thrive.

O-lab was born from the interest of the young activist Tania Rosas, in providing digital tools for Indigenous girls with limited access to education in the region she was born. She founded Fundación El Origen in 2015 to close the digital divide for the youth population living in rural communities.

We are addressing the lack of inclusion and accessibility to education in Colombia where there are more than 389,000 indigenous students who experience inequality to opportunities. From this population, 30.1% of the Indigenous students do not register in any educational institution, and 32.14% are illiterate. Furthermore, because of the COVID-19 crisis, more than 100,000 students in Colombia have abandoned education. This is due to the limited access of educational resources, as well as the fact that 63% of students in rural areas do not have access to the internet. This crisis affects social mobility and becomes the perfect opportunity for oppression and inequality.

Therefore, we believe in this digital age we can use technology as an equalizer that is able to offer individualized education. More specifically, to ensure that at-risk youth do not fall further behind in their education and can become leaders from their communities.

After Covid-19, more than 11 million girls worldwide could not return to school, due to lack of connectivity and inclusive learning. To address this, we launched our personalized offline learning app O-lab worldwide. Our app works on/offline, works on low-cost devices, and adapts to any language, is available to learners in the most vulnerable communities to further their digital skills from home. Additionally, we began training instructors and local communities with no tech background to access our content management system so they could create their own courses, training programs, and projects.

O-lab has become a tool to bridge the digital divide and empower youth with the 21st skills they require to thrive during the post Covid-19 world. With the help of our partners, new courses to enhance social, economic, and research projects are undertaken to better understand problems and solutions, so that O-lab may respond to each issue. Lastly, O-lab provides indispensable information to local organizations and schools with analytical detailed reports so that they may improve their pedagogical approach. Therefore, O-lab ensures learning does not stop in the most vulnerable communities because our solutions improve inclusivity, sustainability, and digital literacy for those who have limited access to technology.

Growing up in La Guajira - Colombia, our Co-founder and CEO Tania Rosas born from an Indigenous and Afro descent family, recognized that access to learning opportunities has been her best ally and weapon to fight against poverty.

In Colombia, out of the 380,000 registered Indigenous students, only 29% will finish high school and 5% will enter higher education, with 70% of those left behind being women. Due to its strategic location in the Northeast point of South America, and besides being the Indigenous capital, La Guajira has also been home to one of the largest African communities in Colombia. With the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans hid in our arid desert and fought alongside the Indigenous people against the Spanish colonizers between 1609 and 1640, making this region one of the most diverse. Unfortunately, La Guajira is also recognized for having the highest poverty, unemployment, and school dropout rates in the country.

This is why Tania is committed to eradicate extreme poverty by developing and providing access to inclusive digital education in La Guajira, because in this region when a girl is out of school, it affects entire communities. In fact, what this can look like is gender violence, forced marriages, and teenage pregnancies. The work at Fundación El Origen is empowering girls to become leaders and democratize accessibility to quality education so we may eradicate extreme poverty not only in La Guajira, but across the world.

Our solution aligns with the TPrize challenge as we are fighting to eradicate inequality through accessible and inclusive digital education, utilizing our personalized offline app and LMS O-Lab. We train local teachers to use O-lab so rural students are empowered to develop job skills, improve educational outcomes, and access opportunities to realize success. Therefore, our project is adapting to benefit the most underserved, and to ensure equal opportunity for all is present to close the digital divide and diminish inequality in education to encourage life-long learning and prepare vulnerable populations to thrive for the future.

Currently, our work concentrates in Colombia, mainly in the area of La Guajira; the region with the highest school dropout rate and the largest population of Indigenous groups. Although this is our main area of implementation, we feel deeply connected to other regions suffering similar inequalities. For this very reason, we are currently leading projects with educational organizations across LATAM that use O-lab in their local communities, adapting the platform to their local needs.

By working with community leaders, we plan to increase our reach across LATAM and strengthen our work in the Global South and refugee communities worldwide. We want to give young leaders the opportunity to lead their own projects with O-lab and ensure access to quality education in their own communities. Therefore, we plan on building a strong basis in other areas with organizations that can simultaneously progress our goal to leave no students behind.

O-Lab is not another app that begins and ends its involvement by providing a course or platform, O-Lab is a customizable learning app made specifically for rural communities who are deprived of digital learning opportunities, created by individuals from these very communities. We interact with communities and organizations to continue providing them with a tailored app that contains content for their needs. It functions in every language, including ethnic languages, to bring inclusivity and accessibility to marginalized communities. O-Lab works on/offline and is made to function perfectly on low-cost devices, making implementation and usage accessible for areas that often lack internet access. O-Lab has an intuitive interface, as well as a virtual tutor who guides learners to make learning easy even if they have never used a smartphone before. Lastly, it works as a tool for local organizations, rural schools, and instructors by tracking and producing clear results of development, progress, and engagement of each student. As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and with our community-focused interaction, we have partnered with global organizations to provide courses co-created by local educational institutions in science, entrepreneurship, math, and technology so they can develop digital skills and digital literacy through our platform.

O-lab is an LMS and offline learning app adapted as a response for education in emergency situations.

• O-Lab works offline, it is versatile, light, and functioning on low-cost devices.

• O-Lab includes a virtual assistant that guides beneficiaries in their native language (aiding in language and literacy development). We are improving our technology to AI to create a more personalized approach and customize content, avatars, and languages to the local culture and context automatically.

• Finally, our community engagement approach makes our platform all about interaction where every student and teacher can participate and be heard.

• In our five years of operation, we have seen great results where: 8 out of 10 kids further their education through O-lab (ages 6-17), 8 out of 10 start a STEAM and entrepreneurial course through O-lab (ages 11-17), and 7 out of 10 have become entrepreneurs and leaders in their own communities (ages 17-28). 

• We have been recognized by the UN, stemming from our CEO and founder Tania Rosas, who was awarded Young Leaders of the SDGs. We have partnerships with DHL, World Vision Colombia, W Bank, Children Change Colombia, Save the Children Perú, Teach for Paraguay, INI Mexico, NDI, Teach for South Africa, who are using our technology. We have been recognized and maintain affiliation with the Obama Foundation, YLAI initiative by the US Department of State and the United States Institute of Peace.

1. United Nations

a. https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/tania-rosas/

2. UN News "First Person: The Colombian youth fighting for education for all"

a. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1084912

3. Open Access Government "The app going up against centuries of education inequality"

a. http://www.openaccessgovernment.org/education-inequality/101927/

4. The Obama Foundation

a. https://www.obama.org/fellowship/2019-fellows/tania-rosas/

5. Reuters

a. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-indigenous-education-trfn-idUSKBN27M1UT

6. Allianz

a. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SaA7MuX7UA

• As our technology aims to be a local solution for a global problem we might experience risks on the end-user engagement, for this we have focused on strategic planning with some mitigation strategies. In fact, O-lab is creating a growing global community of community based organizations, local schools and leaders across LATAM and the Global South, where we are working closely with them and conducting focus groups, along with user testing and surveys which are stepping points for any feature or functionality. In addition, our team is composed of young community leaders themselves who are deeply related with the issue along with our 6 years of experience working closely with local schools and communities to allow us to have a broader vision on the road map and to act in a more effective manner. The second risk is related to lack of funding to keep up with the fast-growing implementation. For this we have a sustainability model (business model) that allows us to sell licences of our technology to NGOs worldwide such as World Vision and secretaries of Education which allows us to grow faster and reach a broader audience. We are reaching companies and corporate foundations to create long lasting partnerships to provide hardware and hotspots so they may reach marginalized children and youth across LATAM and the Global South. This helps us to reduce our costs and to provide access to quality inclusive education for every child without barriers.

Due to the school closures at the beginning of 2020, O-lab began as an education provider for rural schools in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Pakistan, and the Philippines to directly benefit more than 10,000 young people at risk of dropping out during 2021, by helping them access digital education for the first time. In fact, over 83% of our beneficiaries have confirmed that O-lab has empowered them, helped them improve their academic performance, and furthered their education from home and school. We've trained more than 500 teachers to develop digital literacy and empowered them with the use of our LMS and app O-lab as virtual assistance to engage students, reduce school dropouts, and further their education without barriers. 

By forming partnerships and alliances this number will continue growing, and by the end of 2022, we expect to have reached an impact of more than 50,000 beneficiaries and continue to empower local teachers and rural schools across the Global South to have access to digital education in vulnerable areas every year. 

In five years, our global growth will see us settled in countries throughout LATAM and the Global South. We expect to see the number of at-risk students taking part in their education process increased with an expected reach of a minimum of 1 million direct beneficiaries.

• Our short-term (1 year ) goal during this first year is to continue our current work and reach our +10,000 beneficiaries milestone. We plan to set out a strong basis and logic model for the coming years. We also expect to involve development evaluation, continue to build strong partnerships with community-based organizations, and partake in a culturally responsive evaluation in our current and future work areas.

• Our intermediate-term (5 year) goal, in addition to seeing our beneficiaries continue their education and seeing a reduced number in drop-out rates by those students reached through our project. Our global growth is expected to see us settled in countries throughout LAC and throughout the Global South. In five years, we expect to see the number of underrepresented students taking part in educational institutions and projects increased. Lastly, we expect to reach a minimum of 1 million beneficiaries, all of whom will have access to self-esteem, goal setting, and racial healing courses.

• As a result, our main points of interest are to:

  • Increase our partnership with rural schools across LATAM and the Global South to empower female teachers to adapt digital tools.

  • Enhance our personalized programming to adapt O-lab to each user automatically (AI)

  • Focus on community engagement and dialectic education.

Qualitative evaluation and data is a key metric for us to track our success, for we know having a wide reach alone does not exemplify an impactful growth. Therefore, we incorporate a culturally responsive evaluation that considers the views and experiences of students, instructors, and community leaders. Through community focus groups and case studies, we are able to analyze how our project is impacting the learning process and livelihood of at-risk children and youth. Additionally, with the focus groups and interviews with beneficiaries, we have the ability to gain insight into their perception of how O-lab has changed their pedagogy approach. We also utilize surveys and assessments to measure the students’ improvement and understanding of their course material through our O-Lab data analytics platform that tracks and produces quantitative results. Lastly, the number of beneficiaries that continue using O-Lab for their programs, the amount that starts their own community or social projects, as well as the amount that shows increased self-esteem and socio-cultural awareness, function as indicators of our success.

full-time staff: 15 people

part-time staff: 3 people

An important part of our project is its personalized approach, as we work in a community in which our CEO and organization were born. Therefore, we understand the importance of locally built solutions and prioritized our collaboration and partnerships with community-led organizations. Every new step to grow our project is done tactfully taking into account culture, personal biases, institutional practices, and community needs. We incorporate culturally responsive evaluation that considers views and experiences of students, teachers, parents, and Indigenous leaders, with respect to the effect of the projects. Through community focus groups and case studies, we will analyze how the perception of culture, heritage, and roles in educational processes has changed. Supporting this, we will utilize surveys and assessments to measure the improvement and understanding in schools through our O-lab data analytics platform which produces more quantitative results like school reports, basic learning rights, 21st-century abilities, and socio-emotional competencies.

• Furthermore, Fundacion El Origen is led by a community of young innovators coming from different backgrounds and regions worldwide. From immigrants, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant leaders, we are committed to awakening the next generation of young leaders by bringing access to inclusive, empowering, and personalized digital education for all. 

• Lastly, and most importantly, O-lab is a solution made by young innovators from underserved communities themselves with the goal of empowering and bringing representation to the younger generations.

  Fundación El Origen has been founded by young women of color themselves coming from different backgrounds and parts of the world. Tania Rosas as a woman of color herself invited young women from underrepresented communities across the world to be part of this project and bring the learning opportunities that they had to their own communities. Since 2015 Origin has offered Internships and apprenticeships for young women of color based on the idea that our projects must grow from the communities we impact. During the contact period, Tania Rosas and managers evaluate the potential to identify interns and apprentices who can be upskilled and developed to fill future roles. Many of the interns' Origin hires are previous beneficiaries. We believe that future leaders have to start somewhere, and they will be hired in an entry-level position, to begin with.

The project aims at diminishing school dropout rates in marginalized communities, as well as improving awareness and value of culture. The outcome from this funding will help us reach more than 10,000 at-risk children in the rural area of Colombia. We will be able to provide access to inclusive digital education with complementary and vocational courses. We aim to not only provide access to education but an education that allows students to partake in their curriculum. Therefore, as O-lab becomes a developmental tool for communities and at-risk individuals, we plan to grow hand-in-hand with community-based organizations and rural teachers while taking into account culture, institutional practices, and community needs.

We are looking to strengtheneth in the following areas:

-Business strategy for our sustainability model which nowadays is a B2B2C model that provides licenses for a fee for corporates and for free to rural schools and at-risk youth.  
-Best practices for data collection to improve our personalized programming to adapt O-lab to each user automatically (AI), community engagement, and dialectic education. 
-Product design to implement AI for more personalized content, translations, customization and to integrate the avatars with more responses in which we are implementing culturally responsive UX/UI. 

Corporates with social responsibility programs based on education and training to low-income communities where O-lab becomes a tool to deliver their projects as well as to measure the impact of them with data collected from the end beneficiaries.