AHA Eskwela Pamilya

AHA-Eskwela-Pamilya (AHA EP) is a pandemic-tested-solution that helps public school students without internet access get access to quality learning experiences.

●      74% of the 26 million public school students enrolled last school year chose modular learning- a system wherein students get their lessons through printed workbooks, and fulfill them at home.

●       Modular Learning isn't an optimal learning experience, as it has little teacher interaction and relies on the parent to teach the child his/her lessons. Modular learning is often chosen out of necessity. Online classes are expensive and face to face classes are not an option.

●      AHA Eskwela Pamilya (AHA EP) is a pandemic tested solution that helps public school students without internet access get access to quality learning experiences.

●      AHA EP does this by training teachers and parents on how to use text-based classrooms on Facebook-Messenger-Lite.

●      AHA EP has trained over 168,000 teachers and parents in 25 school divisions on how to use text-based classrooms. This has allowed schools to conduct various learning activities for over 3 million students.

●     AHA EP comes with over 500 text based lessons that revolve around reading, writing, wellness, and COVID-facts. 

●     The second phase of AHA EP is rolling out an offline mobile app, where high quality learning content can be downloadable offline. This will compliment our text-based-learning platform by allowing students to access videos and pictures without internet. 

If awarded this grant, we will implement AHA EP in 30 of the poorest last-mile-schools in rural Philippines. 

AHA EP has been featured by MIT Solve’s White Paper, the Obama Foundation and Bloomberg.

For many of the almost 600 million people living in Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, COVID-19 has hilighted a chilling new reality: strains of the COVID virus are coming and school lockdowns will happen more often. Most of the countries in our region will not be able to build the infrastructure or promote the policies necessary to make online learning accessible for all. 

 This means that we need to create a transition solution that works for disadvantaged communities who cannot afford to go online, and we need something that can be implemented quickly. This is where AHA EP comes in, as it leverages familiar technology in text-based learning, making the program ready-to-run in a week after training.

AHA EP comes with 500 text-based lessons that include lessons on COVID-education, wellness, reading, and writing. These lessons serve as a starter kit for teachers who want to try the system, and also as activities parents can easily use during long lockdown periods.

A key difference from other edtech solutions is that AHA EP has over 300 students its core team conducts classes with 3x a week. These students, along with their teachers and parents, help us test and adjust the intervention real-time.

AHA EP's second phase is its mobile app which downloads materials offline. This evolution is a product of community feedback, wherein many teachers complained over the fact that text-based-learning cannot present math problems or work with children who cannot read.

• AHA EP serves public schools in areas with concentrated poverty where students have little to no access to internet. Many of the students who can’t afford online learning are from families with a monthly income of $100-$200. When polled, 85% of these students in August 2020 preferred to be contacted through Facebook messenger, which only requires cellphone signal and not the internet to access.

• AHA EP continually engages over 300 core students through thrice-a-week Facebook messenger classes, which allows us to refine the system over time. From 2020-2021, these core students have given us a 95% satisfaction rating, 95% of the parents cited improvement in learning behavior, and 86% of the parents have felt more confident in teaching.

• Because these 300 students only make up a fraction of the 3 million students the platform has reached over time, AHA EP has committed to having monthly conversations with 11 public schools that represent over 10,000 students. These conversations have helped us expand AHA EP's classes. Text-based doctor-consultations, and text-based wellness exercises came out of community feedback and have helped greatly increase mental-health outcomes.

• Teachers have also raved about our learning hub wherein 16,000 users have downloaded audio lessons, original stories and songs, and 500+ text based lessons. These lessons have helped alleviate teacher load.

• If awarded this grant, the students of 30 last mile schools will get access to a better learning experience through more holistic programs, more access to teachers, and more interactions with classmates.

AHA EP directly address the "barriers to more widespread access to EDTech for more disadvantaged groups include access to devices and internet connectivity...," mentioned in Challenge's white paper.

On page 34 of the same paper, AHA Learning Center (AHA EP's organization) is mentioned as an example post-COVID-19 for medium to low-tech solutions. We have worked constantly with our users through our 300 students and 11 adopted schools to refine our system for the last 18 months. 

AHA EP's second phase, its off-line mobile app are a product of these conversations. The offline mobile app directly answers user feedback on AHA EP's core weakness— that text-based learning cannot work for younger grades, who cannot read, and that text based learning cannot properly present more complex math lessons. 

Furthermore, the 168,000 teachers and parents who have taken our training programs at AHA have been given full access to all our lessons through our learning hub and all our training materials. Attendees of our training can revise our material, making AHA EP one of the largest independently run open-sourced programs in the country.

These parents have adapted, and revised our learning system, adding chatbots, revising lessons, and even helping us create a daily national radio program on AM radio.These alliterations of AHA EP have made the intervention rich and have given us a network of allies and collaborators all over the country. 

Jaton Zulueta  is the founder and president of AHA Learning Center. Jaton is an award-winning educator, community organizer, and radio producer for educational-content.

Many of the interventions in country suffer from a very basic problem: they haven't interacted with public school students during the pandemic. AHA EP started with over 300 students in March 2020, 15 days after the first lockdown. 19 months later, AHA EP is still going strong.

This constant interaction with students allowed us to understand where our students were coming from, and what challenges they could realistically tackle. 

It was that understanding of our target market which allowed us to get approval from 25 school division superintendents to conduct those first rounds of trainings. It was that on-the-ground experience that helped us work with the Department of Health and eventually the Office-of-the-Vice President on similar programs. 

AHA EP is only starting and still has the potential to be game changing as this next run of the intervention hopes to provide more support for schools post-training. AHA EP's newer iterations have yet to be shared to the entire network. It is now a place for doctor consultations, for safe spaces, and for parent-and-teacher conferences.

For last mile schools in rural areas, AHA EP can be a window to another world of learning. AHA EP can connect resource people and their resources to far flung areas. Through this, we can better understand how we can help each other.

AHA EP classrooms has served to be effective in emergency situations, becoming a hub where we've coordinated groceries during lockdown, vaccination schedules, and even an SOS center during wild-fires for communities of illegal-settlers. 

• For the text based learning system, we have tested this approach with the 300 students we have been servicing for AHA EP over the last 18 months. The 300 students are divided by learning levels and subjects, and we are currently managing 52 active FB messenger groups for the 300 students. We have tested this through training the trainer program with over 168,000 teachers and parents.

• For the offline mobile app, we have only started to test this October 2021 with 280 students. Initial findings are positive but it is too early to make any definitive findings. We're only starting to roll out math lessons and reading lessons in the next month.

• For the text-based learning system, we use Facebook messenger lite or FB messenger free. For Facebook messenger lite or free users, they can receive texts, answer polls, and send emoji reactions to messages. For a minimum amount that our organization sponsors per user, users can listen and send voice recordings, watch and send videos and pictures, and even upload word or pdf files.   

• For our offline mobile app, which is tentatively titled "AHA by O-Lab" we work with O-lab, a non profit that works with NGOs who work with communities with little-to-no-access to the internet. The app allows teachers to upload lessons, videos, and quizzes on a monthly basis. Whenever the user connects to the internet, the content updates automatically, deleting old content and replacing it with new content. It also helps us track student progress and allows us to hold learning assessments. 

We believe that those who have the least in life deserve the best in education. This means that those who have been left behind (those who might not have access to better learning materials)

• Long Term Impact 
  •  AHA EP gets institutionalized as a solution for last mile public schools by the Department of education; helping 10 million of the poorest public school students in the Philippines get access to a high quality learning experiences 
• Short Term Impact
  • AHA EP can improve the following outcomes:
    • Increase % of students whose grade improve after using AHA EP (target: at least 75%)
    • Increase % of parents whose mental outcomes improve after using AHA EP and attending the parent clubs (target: at least 75%)
    • Increase % of teachers who use AHA EP for all their subjects (target: at least 75%)
• Outputs
  • AHA EP graduates 60 teachers who use AHA EP
  • AHA EP gets 30 last mile schools become AHA EP partners
  • AHA EP gets 9000 students using AHA EP programs
  • AHA EP lessons gets used by 9000 students
  • AHA EP gets at least 60 teachers to use AHA EP's app
  • AHA EP conducts parent clubs for the 30 last mile schools
• Activities
  • AHA EP conducts train the trainer programs for their text based learning program for 120 teachers from 30 last mile schools (representing at least 9000 students)
  • AHA EP gets 120 teachers from 30 last mile schools to use its AHA EP lessons
  • AHA EP does parent clubs for the 30 last mile schools

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• For AHA EP, we'd like to measure the following:
  • Number of teachers trained in AHA EP (target: 30)
  • Number of last mile schools served (target: 30)
  • Number of students teachers represent (target 9,000)
  • Number of students who get access to AHA EP lessons (target 9,000)
  • Number of parents spoken to (target 9,000)
  • Increase % of students whose grade improve after using AHA EP (target: at least 75%)
  • Increase % of parents whose mental outcomes improve after using AHA EP (target: at least 75%)
  • Increase % of teachers who use AHA EP for all their subjects (target: at least 75%)

• For the next year, we look to have 30 last mile school partners where we've expanded AHA EP that represents at least 60 teachers and 9000 public school students 
  • We hope that by this time, all our training materials will be open sourced and ready to download in our learning hub
• In three years, we'd like to finish translating all our training material to English and launching with our Obama Foundation network partners in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia
  • We hope we can leverage our network to not only bring our program to other countries but also create a franchise model where country partners can revise the existing AHA EP material into their context
  • We hope that in 2024 we can have a massive learning summit that won't only be attended by our regional partners but also by the different teachers and parents who have used AHA EP
• In five years, we'd like to be able to have at least 10 million users in the Philippines, with another 200,000 users from regional partners in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia 

Sustained Engagement - One of the big challenges of our first run of AHA EP was sustained engagement. While we did teach 168,000 teachers and reached 3 million students, it was tough to track progress and feedback post-training. This is why we're focusing on smaller and more sustainable partnerships.

The major barriers at the moment are related to financing, product, access to talent, and cultural. 

• Financing - Although we do have strong local corporate sponsors who help sponsor the costs of our training, we have made a decision to give as much material we can for free. This has limited our finances but widened our reach. The fall-out of this strategy is that it has directly affected our ability to hire more talent and has limited our back-end staff. 
• Access to talent- We only have 13 full time staff but are powered by 100+ volunteers. Many of the work relies heavily on our volunteers, many of them overworked teachers on the ground.
• Product - The mobile app has only launched last week and while initial results are promising, the problem of presenting math lessons and presenting guided content for non-readers persists. Much work needs to be done on our end to make sure this goes smoothly.
  • We are partnering with Pratham Education Foundation in India for our reading program, and hope to put some of our Teaching at the Right Level materials on the app.
• Cultural- New ideas like these are difficult to implement more so in institutions like the Department of the Education wherein many teachers are not completely open to tech or maybe using other tech. Online Learning management systems are also more preferred by schools because of the number of features, but suffer from a lack of accessibility to the the end-user, the students.

AHA Learning Center (AHA) is an award-winning, internationally recognized non-profit that provides world-class education support to low-performing but high-potential public school students.

Established in 2009, AHA provides public school students a holistic support system of academic interventions, support system skills interventions, and social-emotional learning interventions, all aimed at giving students who have been left behind a way to move forward. 

AHA's vision is to create role model public school students: college graduates ready to work, role models ready to serve our community, and global citizens ready to change the world.

From 2009 to 2020, AHA mostly ran community learning centers, servicing over 3,000 students in two sites. In 2020, we were forced to close down our two physical sites, and adopted AHA EP, our text-based learning service, to our existing clients. 

AHA EP expanded aggressively, and soon we had offers to work with regional school divisions, NGOs, who were all looking for a low bandwidth solution.

Since March 2020, AHA Learning Center has reached over 3 million students through our partnership, trained over 168,000 teachers, and created over 200 hours of educational content through our daily radio and tv program.  

AHA has been awarded locally and internationally. In December 2021, AHA EP got a shout-out from President Barack Obama, as the former president recognized AHA as one of the more promising solutions to come out from Asia during the pandemic.

Our solution team is composed of more than 12 full-time staff, around 3 part-timers, and more than 100 volunteers. The 100 volunteers are divided into young professionals volunteering their talent, and public school teachers and parents who we work with for our grassroots interventions

The majority of our full-time staff are educators. They have worked inside the Philippine public school system. They know first-hand the challenges that students and even parents are going through this time. They know what can work and what are the possible challenges when launching something like this inside the public school community. 

Not only that, but our team has years of experience in community development. We have worked with communities on the ground since 2009, and we have established a strong foundation of trust. 

Our beneficiaries know that when we launch a program, it is well thought of and comes from good intentions. This trust has all allowed us to receive real-time and relevant information about our interventions and this has allowed us to make changes that will move our projects forward. 

We also have a strong board of former undersecretaries of education/finance, strong relationships with top universities, and access to free consulting from top advertising and consulting firms (Mckinesy & Co consultants recently finished a volunteer-consulting stint with us). 

Our secret weapon is our relationship with community members on the ground through our monthly/weekly consultations. The parents and teachers of the beneficiaries keep our program grounded and relevant - reminding us that during a pandemic, compassion and care should come first before any project outcome.

When the first lockdown in the country happened on March 15, 2020, what became apparent was that AHA Learning Center's model of holding physical learning centers were suddenly obsolete. Jaton Zulueta, our team lead, recalls receiving multiple texts from Facebook messenger from many of the mothers in our communities - mostly cries for help. Jaton then realized that many of the community were on Facebook messenger free already, if the mothers are engaging us on this platform, why can't their children?

From March 15 to March 28, Jaton and his small team started converting open source lessons from international sources, old lessons, and COVID-advisories into text based format. By March 28, we were already holding classes, and had 100 lessons- a mix of text-based stories, games, writing prompts, COVID lessons. We decided to hold classes everyday for a month, to make sure the kids knew that we weren't going anywhere. 

The most important of that first batch were the COVID lessons, where we based the lessons on the questions the children were asking about COVID at the time. These lessons eventually were picked by the Department of Health, which helped open doors to bigger opportunities and wider partnerships.

Our partnerships are divided into the following strands:

• Corporate partners - they help fund our initiatives
  • Ex. San Miguel Foundation, Sun Life Foundation, Gokongwei Brothers Foundation, Dyson Foundation, LBC Foundation amongst others;
• Academic partners-  they help check our work and provide consultations
  • Ex. Ateneo de Manila, Miriam College, Philippine Normal University amongst others.

• NGO Networks -help us connect to beneficiaries
  • Yellow Boat of Hope- where our joint project, Teach Anywhere, helps connect us to last mile schools)
  • Consuelo Foundation - a funder that helps connect us to shelters for abused women
• Government Units- help us use their network for scale
  • 25 school divisions from the Department of Education
  • the Department of Health, advocacy unit 
  • the Office of the Vice President (where we train and consult for their 45 OVP Community Learning Hubs)
• International orgs- we localize their material and implement versions of their program locally
  • Ex. Pratham Foundation, Missionbit, Girls Opportunity Network, Rising Academies  

We are very busy this pandemic, and choose to work with groups that help alleviate the pain many of our people are going through during these difficult times. 

At this stage, we need to focus on capacity building for our organization. Getting comprehensive needs assessment, refining our scaling strategy and ramping up our monitoring and evaluation tools can help ensure our solutions' sustainability and up-skill our current staff.

We have done good work already, having expanded more in a year than we have in the last twelve years. However, our solution needs pockets of effectivity, stronger case studies, and robust data to back up the stories and numbers we've hit so far. We also would like to invest in third party auditing firm for impact, so we can make a stronger case to scale nationwide and institutionalize our intervention at the Department of education.

Learning from a peer to peer network of fellow innovators from other countries can also help us understand the other countries' market in more meaningful ways. We need to leverage existing partners and find new partners in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia that can help us localize our materials. The criteria for these new partners must include not only the ability to scale with quality, but also must share our commitment to giving those who have the least in life the best in education. It's important that they believe that the work should ultimately be open-sourced. 

For partnership goals we need to advice on five primary areas:

• Business Model- Wow might we keep our solution open sourced and still get sustainable means of funding?
• Financial- How might we create the financial infrastructure internally that will help us apply to the multilateral grants?
• Network Connections-  How might we leverage and deepen current partnerships, and institutionalize current interventions?
• Monitoring and Evaluation-  How might we create a robust monitoring and evaluation system which can be easily followed by our grassroots partners on-the-ground? 
• Product and Service Distribution- How might we expand our client base strategically and get quality clients, who share our vision for their community and are willing to make the necessary commitments to see long lasting change?
• To add- pandemic: How might we position the solution post-pandemic? How can AHA EP serve as a starting point for areas with little to no internet to get high quality education?