National E-Learning Platform

Delivering a platform that affordably, reliably and conveniently provides wholistic, quality and approved education content for students.

We seek to provide a resilient, responsive and user-friendly National E-Learning Resource Center with quality educational materials as approved by Kenyan Institute of Curriculum Development. A novel construct, we hope to deliver affordable, certified and top quality online education platform for all Kenyans regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds that deeply impedes the need for quality education for all. 

We hope that through our platform scholars can study, teach others, share artistic works, undertake projects/research works and compete and, or in complementary to their normal academic endeavors all at their convenience. 

Similarly, by targeting youth, our project seeks to address high unemployment rates in the country especially in the education sector, handsome technical skills like videography and harness talents thereby matching it to potential career opportunities.

Stratification of schools in 'quality clusters' and poor teacher-pupil ratio help stall our growth and development. The former implies variation in quality, economic and performance indices per strata, a situation that defeats the concept of accessible quality education for all. This paradigm explains the disjoint between literacy levels 78.73% (UNESCO) and low quality life in Kenya and diminished research contribution hence over reliance on western technologies.

A student from a economically empowered background can afford 'National or precious Private' institutions and is expected to excel as these schools recruit the well qualified tutors, have access to quality education materials and fully equipped laboratories for science courses to mention a few; while their counterparts from poor backgrounds fill up public schools with strained resources. As such, expected success in life for the later is greatly diminished.

Government employment for tutors is increasingly becoming difficult to come by, forcing trained tutors to resort to other jobs and languish in joblessness. Besides, talent harnessing among students is low and some undergo the traditional education without realizing their life's potential. Science competitions, fairs and projects are under-emphasized in the education system, all aspects we aim to promote with this project.

Our solution focusses mainly on students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, marginalized communities or those unable to reliably access quality academic resources as their counterparts in the so called 'national schools'

At very affordable subscription fees, we aim to give them unlimited access to top quality academic and educative resource center and level the 'playing field.' This platform will not only equip them with requisite education to succeed in life, but also interactively sensitive them to global contemporary issues and giving them opportunities to participate in them. Our virtual lab aspect of the platform will spur and horn quest for scientific solutions to global challenges. In the end, their communities will be immensely positively impacted for their educational success.

Many tutors will get remote employment opportunities hence contributing to decent work and good life. 

I've done surveys using questionnaire with parents, teachers and high school students as below:

-and, despite firsthand experience on economical inhibition to access quality education, I have deduced from data that 84% students would wish to join 'national/private schools' mainly because of the perceived quality of therein.

-performance of national/private school students is nearly X60 better than their mates and have better chances to pass their final exams and join good universities to pursue quality courses. Same applies to those from marginalized, geographically disadvantaged and insecure areas especially large swathes of north and eastern Kenya, infamously dubbed as Kenya's 'arc of insecurity.'

-Government employs teachers on rolling basis due to lack of vacancies, with most of the 'class of 2017' yet to be employed. It's almost true that graduation does not guarantee you a job in this career with many shying or getting advice to snub teaching career.

-Most public schools have understocked libraries and laboratories, undermining quality studies.

-Most students and teachers own mobile phones (80% of population) and can thus access our technology.

-Kenya is ranked a lower class income country with most children falling in this underprivileged group.

-with technology and the world transforming to a global village, interactive learning and networking can arrest the status quo and aggregate efforts towards major global issues.

Our project is at concept stage. 

Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all is inevitable for economic growth and development of a country and, Kenya commits to this course.

As a youth, and limited in seed funds and capacity, I have hitherto invested time and resources to research and refine a solution that seeks to leverage optimization of existing web/mobile technology to help Kenya and hopefully the African continent realize this commitment. 

So far, I have assembled a team of 3 (two co-founders-me and a female counterpart and an operations associate to coordinate our activities. even though we don't earn salaries yet, we have networked with several talented and nationally on-demand teachers to record several high quality tutorials that we will upload once we have the platform developed. 

Since we are all unemployed, we meet 3 days a week to plan and organize visits to different locations where our resource persons deliver content. We also meet to apply for seed funds and explore opportunities to help us set up and roll out hitherto, without success.

Our solution requires use of programming languages to develop a web based and mobile application (full stack) to deliver a secure, resilient, responsive and reliable national education resource center. This will also integrate AI to learn and adapt user characteristics to help give them tailored experience, being their 'personal study partner, coach' throughout. For instance, AI will use behavioral technology to monitor a students study regime and reaction to test results understanding their strengths and weaknesses to suggest best path to optimize their potential.

We will have heavy reliance on database management systems, audiovisual, biomimicry to simulate real reactions in biology virtual lab, and simulation for the virtual laboratory and, cloud technology to store and access data. For even better experience, we may also integrate third party GPS solutions.

In future, we may consider partnering with arduino experts or other hardware manufacturers to deliver affordable devices for use in remote rural areas without internet connectivity.

Since our project is still at concept stage, we shall review more feasible tech options as need arises.

With successful launch, we target approximately 3.5 million Kenyan students in both primary and secondary schools. This increase annually with increase in yearly school admission rates in the country. In total, a mammoth 42,000 public schools will be boosted by our intervention providing their students with crucial or supplementary learning resource center where even the schools will be able to manage some aspects of academic administration.

In the next 12 months we hope to employ below domiciled as we will set to attain 15% annual growth rate:

Total number of new employees: 420

New full-time employees: 50

New part-time employees: 370

Male employees: 200

Female employees: 220

Male young employees (age 18-29): 120

Female young employees (age 18-29): 150

Positions for persons with disability: 60

Besides, we aim to connect the signed up students with potential opportunities as befitting their profiles in the hope that we can stimulate positive trend in their young lives.

Since our idea is feasibly highly scalable with little additional costs when entering a new market, we hope to capture other countries with similar challenges such as Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia to name a few in Africa to help transform the education sector and economy improve socioeconomic indices.

To ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by developing and launching our platform.

To promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment from the first 12 months by providing 420 jobs to unemployed youths.

To reduce inequalities based on economic stratifications in the country, a long term goal, by availing top quality resource center for all.

To build a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and foster innovation by developing a unique, innovative and scalable platform (web and mobile)

To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by deliberately designing a recruitment policy to source for female talents (220), 12 months from launch.

To promote scientific curiosity among students by availing interactive fun science content and organizing competitive fairs, conferences, projects etc. 12 months from launch.

To encourage talent showcasing and potentially harness those talents by empowering students to do so in their profile sections.

10K+ of student subscribers from all socioeconomic and geographical backgrounds as gauged by their current or previous schools and location of residence in the first 12 months

420 jobs to be created in the first 12 months as per: Total number of new employees: 420, New full-time employees: 50, New part-time employees: 370, Male employees: 200, Female employees: 220, Male young employees (age 18-29): 120, Female young employees (age 18-29): 150, Positions for persons with disability: 60

To achieve number 1 and 2 above.

To successfully build and launch our platform with 50% subscribed members giving 3/5 reviews of satisfaction.

To hire 220+ females in the first 12 months

To obtain 10%+ quality science projects/concepts on our platform from science class, same statistic in participation in discussions in the platform hosted science fora.

To identify 20%+ of subscribed students as uniquely talented through platform enabled participations. 

1. Start-up cost (High Impact and High Probability of Occurring)
Currently applying for SOLVED for seed funding and grants
Personal savings and investments
Pitching to attract investors

2. Government Regulations through KICD on quality of hosted content, conformation to curriculum etc. (High Impact and Low Probability of Occurring)
Coordinating with statutory authorities through our legal team to ensure full compliance with the law.

3. Technology and internal capacity to launch (High Impact and High Probability of Occurring)
Seeking help of SOLVED grant to help us identify and engage full-stack developer and to help us develop internal capacity.
Active learning online

4. Marketing (High Impact and Low Probability of Occurring)
Leveraging digital media to invest in robust marketing

5. Legal uncertainties (Medium Impact and Low Probability of Occurring)
Employing full time legal counsel to oversee all contractual, copyright and legal operations

9. Cybersecurity threats (High Impact and Low Probability of Occurring)
Employ watertight cybersecurity policies,
Benchmark from global industry leaders

9. Competition (Low Impact and Low Probability of Occurring)
Occupying unique niche, innovative business model and innovatively readjusting to limit competition

Ronny Awene, high school graduate

Invests 80% of his time in the development of idea. Firsthand experience in economic impediments to quality education which he uses to dispense strategic vision guidance, target market characteristic, market research, mobilization, wireframe and platform development review and mobilization. 

Paul Ochieng, junior Civil Engineer and Project Manager

Volunteers 80% of his time to coordinate operations, content acquisition, quality control and assurance, awareness campaigns and helps in vision delivery through platform design review.

Rivtor Beatrice, BA. Political Science and Sociology

Dedicates 60% of her time to dispense her experience on social frameworks, platform design review, awareness creation, developing content acquisition scheduling, advising on all issues of compliance. 

No partnerships yet. But we are in regular consultations with local universities to streamline our idea and ensure holistic approach that will capture all the objectives and goals of our entrance.

I am not qualified since I am not a teen girl.

I am qualified since I am within the age bracket, is passionate about social tech to improve the livelihoods of women and has a working prototype for my solution.

The prize will enable me and my team develop come up with a mold for production en masse, set up and roll out.