Education is the key

Our intervention aims to address 2 key issues:

Enhance student well-being. Pandemic-induced school closures have left some 1.5 billion students globally out of the classroom (World Bank, 2020). In India, school closures have affected 320 million children, further increasing educational inequity and adding to the anxiety/stress levels of learners. One challenge that educators across the globe are facing is to prioritise student well-being, with learner loneliness increasing on account of the lack of social interaction/creative output.

Reaching students with diverse access to technology. Nationally, only 24% of Indian's households have access to the Internet. 66% of Indian’s population lives in villages, and only a little over 15% of rural households have access to Internet services. For urban households, the proportion is 42%. This makes it challenging to reach a vast majority of children in Indian with remote learning. However, India has more than 400 million active WhatsApp users. 53% of phone users in India use non-internet enabled phones (National Statistical Office, 2019).

SOL’s intervention is designed keeping in focus Indian’s diverse access to technology. We’ve ensured our program is  flexible context sensitive to be hosted across different platforms to reach children in the most under-resourced spaces.

Prior to the pandemic, one in six children globally were not in a formal school setting, with overrepresentation from girls and young people experiencing poverty, living in rural areas, conflict zones, or with disability The pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities, as two-thirds of the young learning population—1.3 billion people—do not have reliable access to the internet in their homes, hindering their participation in distance learning. Faced with the increasing economic uncertainty within their families, millions of young people are being pushed into child labor instead of returning to school. Put together, these factors mean that far too few young people between the ages of 5 and 18 are afforded the space, time, or resources to build foundational and durable skills. Nor do they have the ability to explore their academic, extracurricular, and creative passions, or meaningfully engage with their peers and communities. 

Technology-enabled innovations for teaching, learning, and assessment can help learners catch up on what they’ve been missing while building on individual strengths and gains. Student and teacher experiences vary widely in this pandemic schooling era, but across all demographics, the psycho-social wellbeing of young people has been severely impacted and educators are overwhelmed and overtaxed. In addition to mental health services, robust social-emotional learning will be key for learner re-engagement and helping students navigate their shifting academic, social, and familial landscapes.

Our intervention aims to address 2 key issues:

Enhance student well-being. Pandemic-induced school closures have left some 1.5 billion students globally out of the classroom (World Bank, 2020). In India, school closures have affected 320 million children, further increasing educational inequity and adding to the anxiety/stress levels of learners. One challenge that educators across the globe are facing is to prioritise student well-being, with learner loneliness increasing on account of the lack of social interaction/creative output.

Reaching students with diverse access to technology. Nationally, only 24% of Indian's households have access to the Internet. 66% of Indian’s population lives in villages, and only a little over 15% of rural households have access to Internet services. For urban households, the proportion is 42%. This makes it challenging to reach a vast majority of children in India with remote learning. However, India has more than 400 million active WhatsApp users. 53% of phone users in India use non-internet enabled phones (National Statistical Office, 2019).

SOL’s intervention is designed keeping in focus Indian’s diverse access to technology. We’ve ensured our program is  flexible context sensitive to be hosted across different platforms to reach children in the most under-resourced spaces.

Prior to the pandemic, one in six children globally were not in a formal school setting, with overrepresentation from girls and young people experiencing poverty, living in rural areas, conflict zones, or with disability The pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities, as two-thirds of the young learning population—1.3 billion people—do not have reliable access to the internet in their homes, hindering their participation in distance learning. Faced with the increasing economic uncertainty within their families, millions of young people are being pushed into child labor instead of returning to school. Put together, these factors mean that far too few young people between the ages of 5 and 18 are afforded the space, time, or resources to build foundational and durable skills. Nor do they have the ability to explore their academic, extracurricular, and creative passions, or meaningfully engage with their peers and communities. 

Technology-enabled innovations for teaching, learning, and assessment can help learners catch up on what they’ve been missing while building on individual strengths and gains. Student and teacher experiences vary widely in this pandemic schooling era, but across all demographics, the psycho-social wellbeing of young people has been severely impacted and educators are overwhelmed and overtaxed. In addition to mental health services, robust social-emotional learning will be key for learner re-engagement and helping students navigate their shifting academic, social, and familial landscapes.

Our goal is to create a personalized, community-centered approach to learning that provides disadvantaged youth the opportunity to acquire the values, knowledge and skills they need to create a meaningful living for themselves and their families while adapting to the rapid changes that are occurring in work over their lifetime.  We seek to provide these opportunities to youth, and especially to girls and young women, whose work and lives have been disrupted because of poverty, violence, climate chaos or technology.  EDK’s Planet Learning system is inexpensive and can be effective anywhere, even in the most remote parts of the world.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds face a lack of engaging opportunities to build creative confidence and are thereby disempowered to harness their voices to break the cycle of negative outcomes.  Art education has globally proved to build skills that help children be more employable and without it, they are 2X more likely to slip into poverty (National Endowment for the Arts, 2012). Yet the average art teacher: student ratio in India is 1:1400 (RTI filed by Slam Out Loud) with less than 20 hours of art-based education for a child each year. We work with children whose annual family income is less than ₹1.5 lakh and are studying in Govt / affordable private/ Open schools. Since its inception, SOL has pursued a vision that “Every individual will have a voice that empowers them to change lives.” 

Through our endeavors, we have enabled 35,000+ original artworks created by children. Slam Out Loud has created a one of its kind self-learning art curriculum in 2 vernacular languages for children in rural India that engages more than 50000 children and 200 community leaders in art-based learning. The educational body of the state government has added SOL’s remote learning content to its state-wide remote learning packets. Thus, while our long-term, high-touch programs create footprints in the lives of 50,000 children across India, our low-tech art-learning resources have brought the magic of arts to 4.7 million children across 23 India States and 19 countries.

Using high-frequency oral diagnostics to assess engagement and growth on Creative Confidence aspects in children along with Qualitative surveys of stakeholders to monitor growth in our Art-proficiency rubric; our programs have depicted a significant increase in children’s SEL skills (communication, critical thinking, creativity, and self-esteem). We’ve learnt that the addition of art into education has a profound effect on children’s learning because art never tells them they are wrong. Instead, it provides them with a space where their ideas, feelings and identity is accepted without iteration. And that is exactly what a space for fostering wellness looks like.

Broadly, the power of Art in SEL translated into three interrelated changes that we have observed in students who have consistently been exposed to artistic opportunities and experiences:

• Learning to Grow and Stretch as Artists, which relates to how students gain a sense of competence through the arts

• Building Supportive and Meaningful Connections, which concerns the supportive and meaningful relationships that they build with their peers and mentors when participating in art activities and,

• Letting go of the Inner Critic and Discovering the Authentic Voice, which is connected with how the arts provide students with opportunities to garner a sense of autonomy, let go of their self judgement, and adopt an open attitude.

EDK’s technology is designed to promote human-centered values perfectly.  We are transitioning from a conventional “one size fits all” education model to an active, personalized “learner-centered” model.  Everyone is in charge of their own learning. Using Planet Learning, everyone, with any device that can open a browser, has a personal dashboard with the things they are reading or watching, the courses they are taking, the learning teams in which they are participating and a record of their ongoing learning achievements.  Furthermore, all learners are strongly encouraged to create and share their own resources, including their essays, stories, artwork and music. 

EDK’s Planet Learning is personalized, scalable, and deployable at low cost. Used in our Community Learning Centers, it offers disadvantaged youth large quantities of multi-media resources and self-paced career pathways in education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, ICT, food and agriculture, and public safety, that easily combine with local content and needs. Periodically, linked to the Internet, the system offers updates and connection responsive to changing circumstances. It works primarily off the internet on any device that can open a browser. The system can be contained in a small wheeled suitcase, or backpack, and be up and running in less than a minute.

There are at least three good reasons for us to be a Solver. First, we believe being a Solver @ MIT will assist us in recruiting people for our work, here in Cambridge and in our Exchange Partner nations. These include faculty at MIT and other universities who can contribute substantively to EDK’s technology and business strategy, including possibly serving on EDK’s Board of Directors. Second, it increases our credibility among investors and potential partners to have the endorsement of our work that MIT provides.  Finally, we believe Solve will help us connect to promising new sources of funding.

EDK’s Planet Learning is personalized, scalable, and deployable at low cost. Used in our Community Learning Centers, it offers disadvantaged youth large quantities of multi-media resources and self-paced career pathways in education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, ICT, food and agriculture, and public safety, that easily combine with local content and needs. Periodically, linked to the Internet, the system offers updates and connection responsive to changing circumstances. It works primarily off the internet on any device that can open a browser. The system can be contained in a small wheeled suitcase, or backpack, and be up and running in less than a minute.

Our goal is to create a personalized, community-centered approach to learning that provides disadvantaged youth the opportunity to acquire the values, knowledge and skills they need to create a meaningful living for themselves and their families while adapting to the rapid changes that are occurring in work over their lifetime.  We seek to provide these opportunities to youth, and especially to girls and young women, whose work and lives have been disrupted because of poverty, violence, climate chaos or technology.  EDK’s Planet Learning system is inexpensive and can be effective anywhere, even in the most remote parts of the world. 

• Outcome: Stronger Enthusiasm. Clearer career goals and more active hope for the future Measurement Plan: Pre and Post Opinion Surveys to observe changes  
• Outcome: Obtain Certificate of Career Qualifications Measurement Plan: Frequency in which learners obtain a Career Qualification Certificate  
• Outcome: Development of meaningful work individually and for the community Measurement Plan: At the community level, frequency in which learners create meaningful, self-supporting work

 we are currently working on a pilot with Village Health Workers (VHWs) in partnership with MGH and Mbarara University for Technology and Science (MUST) in two communities in Uganda. Here, our partners have integrated pre-assessment quizzes on all courses and are working with surveys for the purpose of gathering baseline data as well, all within the Planet Learning system. Additionally, we are developing a proposed pilot for Somalia that employs Planet Learning to help Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya to become “Ready to Return” and, at the same time, provides the conditions in selected Somali communities that enable them to become “Peace Building Communities” functioning as “magnets” for the Ready to Return refugees in Dadaab. Tracking improvement with baseline data is essential in this six to twelve month development program to prepare Somali refugees to become skilled in a trade or service as team member in a Peace Building Community.

As never before, we must adapt to frequent life-changing conditions.   Old work disappears, new work appears, without warning.  Therefore education cannot involve preparation for a fixed body of tasks.   To meet this challenge, EDK’s Planet Learning provides a dynamic wealth of multimedia resources that enables learners to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill their changing needs within their changing environment. Planet Learning gives learners meaningful opportunities to craft their futures.   We draw upon the diverse talents within every community to enable learning to become lifelong, continuously adapting to new realities.

EDK works with nation-based organizations that are irrationally committed to scaling highly effective learning for all of their people, especially the disadvantaged.  We work closely with our partners to ensure that the improvements in learning that are demonstrated and documented to be highly effective are scaled to everyone throughout their country.  Over the past decade EDK and its partners have served 50,000 learners in more than 100 communities in Nepal, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, and with Syrian and Somali refugees in Jordan and Kenya. We hope, by 2027, to be supporting a powerful network of 100 such nation-based public-private partnerships

• Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services) 
• Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data) 
• Something so new it doesn’t have a name

In spite of being a small team, our company culture aims to consciously develop a team that’s diverse in representation (in terms of gender/sexual orientation, language, religion, race, caste, age-group and experience). We believe this is the only way to ensure our work and products are both accessible and joyful for each individual - no matter who they are or where they come from. 

We employ multiple approaches to ensure we remain diverse and inclusive, in both thought and action. For instance, when we launched our latest hiring cycle; we purposefully promoted each opening across platforms that cater to/offer opportunities to marginalized communities. Recently, we also recruited a specially-abled person as an intern on our team. Further, our newest learning resource Gen eARTh offers audio-visual storytelling experiences which have been translated into the Indian Sign Language (ISL) to promote accessibility. While we have already begun including issues of Social Justice like gender equity and climate action within our resources, going forward, we intend to make our resources as accessible as possible by offering learning experiences that are multilingual and translated into sign language.

Low-connectivity does not mean no technology. Our focus is on pedagogies to blend technology in learning: encouraging activity outside of the platform through project-based learning, sharing lesson plans for teachers, supplemental learning resources aligned for self-study, and interactive activities to simulate what may not be possible in low-resource contexts. Our Technology is designed to support teachers with limited capacity and training, users with limited digital literacy skills, and learning in large class sizes where there may be differing learning abilities within a single class. Overall, this adaptable and flexible approach allows users to contextualize based on needs and address equity constraints. 

Due to the current pandemic, schools in many parts of the world have remained closed for more than a year, further exacerbating the learning crisis. When schools eventually start to reopen, it is expected that most schools will need to adopt a hybrid model where learning happens both at home and in classrooms. As a result, the relevant infrastructure, including both Internet connectivity and devices, are not always available to access digital learning materials that support the continuity of learning in this hybrid model. There is now an urgent need for openly available learning materials that are aligned with local curriculum and low-cost solutions for disseminating these materials to students for use at school and at home. In addition, teachers are now required to facilitate learning in a learning model for which they were never trained and for which they have little experience. Providing appropriate support for teachers, means giving them access to training, supportive technology, and effective processes for supporting learners remotely, and at uncertain time intervals.

Our organizational strategy is to help build strong Exchange Partners in the one hundred nations whose people are suffering the most from poverty, violence, climate chaos and technology that has disrupted their livelihoods.  We do this by providing advice and powerful tools, such as Planet Learning, that they can use to create customized learning systems that their governments in turn can scale to all of their people.  Thus our financial requirements are modest, an estimated $2 million annually. We plan to cover 50% of our costs from modest fees paid by 100 nation-based Exchange Partners, averaging an annual $10,000 per Partner.  The balance will come from ongoing investments by individuals, foundations, governments and corporations. This will provide OLE with $2 million/year, $1 million of which will be invested in supporting existing and expanding new Partners, with $500k for continued software development and $500k for communications, development and administration.

 Building strong partners around the world seems to be a hugely important part of your strategy and also one that is difficult to do. It's hard to know with whom you're dealing, how much you can trust them, how effective they are, etc.

 Building a strong partner is central to our theory of change. The only way we can build and sustain meaningful change in a place is to have a partner in the country who assumes most of the responsibility to introducing and maintaining improvements. We work hard to find and qualify such "irrationally committed" individuals and organizations. The good news is that, over the past ten years, our track record is pretty good. We have rarely struck out. Once, our key leader left the country before he and we had a chance to find a replacement. Another time, after investing heavily in preparation for a major program our founding partner lost the contract, 10% of which would have easily covered the cost of a major program. We have had to find new leaders and, in one recent case, withdrew our sponsorship of a local organization and found a much stronger partner in the process. But for something like in nine out of 12 occasions, our nation-based partners have been highly effective in addressing the challenges involved in sustained institutional change. The much bigger problem has been repeated changes in governments and slowness to act. That requires a level of persistence and patience on the part of our partners that is challenging.