Upepo Playful Learning

Children are, by definition, hands-on learners. They learn by interacting with the world around them and tinkering with it. Naturally, they don't learn by passively consuming content from an adult and then regurgitating it on a standardized assessment. 

As Lego Foundation & UNICEF put it so well:

"Play sets the foundation for the development of critical social and emotional knowledge and skills. Through play, children learn to forge connections with others, and to share, negotiate, and resolve conflicts, as well as learn self-advocacy skills. Play also teaches children leadership as well as group skills. Furthermore, play is a natural tool that children can use to build their
Resilience and coping skills, as they learn to navigate relationships and deal with social challenges as well as conquer their fears, for example through re-enacting fantasy heroes. "'

The problem is, however, that at least 500 million children across the world don't get the right access to play, and, by extension, don't get to develop and foster their creativity, problem-solving, and critical social and emotional knowledge and skills. 

While many efforts are in place to bring more kids into formal education and increase learning outcomes, - they are overwhelmingly focused on foundational literacy and numeracy with no focus on crucial skills like creativity and problem-solving. 

The reason often given is that it is hard to measure and hence not a valuable use of money. There is no direct cents-per-child increase in value. 

We believe that this is the problem. At the foundational level, instead of building standards, assessments, frameworks and curricula around crucial skills, we just brush it off till students are seen as "lacking life-skills" or "unemployable". We then spend billions of dollars in building these skills at adulthood. 

The Upepo platform and curriculum help students nurture their creativity and problem-solving skills through social, gamified learning. It is a tiered solution that serves students, schools, and organizations at different levels. 

• For those with devices, students get access to a safe, moderated, online tik-tok style application where they get access to hundreds of hands-on projects, real-world challenges and a community of kids. 
• For schools and organizations with a single device, teachers or caregivers get access to a portal with content and curriculum that helps them lead sessions on creativity and problem-solving with their students. 
• For those with no devices or access, they get access to curated lesson-plans and trainings on how to bring playful, creative problem solving and hands-on learning to their communities. 
• Further we provide contextualized, translated resources to rural regions that have no skills or access to english language instruction.
• For governments and large institutions we provide capacity building, curriculum frameworks, assessment standards and implementation support.

In all three models, broadly students are exposed to:

• Creative, Hands-on Problem solving activities across arts, science, math and beyond.
• Real-world challenges like the Back to School challenge or aligned to SDGs on water usage or bullying etc.
• A community where kids can see other students from around the world sharing their ideas and thoughts on different project
• Students can watch and learn, build and share and be exposed to creativity and problem-solving!

Our solution is aimed at benefiting low and mid-income students in the 5-12 age group across India & South Asia. 

Currently most solutions are strictly focussed on literacy, numeracy and exam-prep.

We work with them through

• Direct to Parents: Through the freely available platform
• Work with Schools & Learning centers who work with students: We provide platform, curriculum and training. 
• Work with Institutions & Governments who work with students: We provide, platform, curriculum, standards, frameworks, training and capacity building.

When students engage with our content, platform and curriculum:

• They get exposed to many personalized creative projects and challenges in areas of their interest like art, craft, math, etc.
• They see how other students across the world have worked on these projects and challenges.
• Peer-learning effects motivate them to go and build, tinker and share their creations either online or offline with their peers.
• Doing this consistently over an academic year builds habits of creativity & problem-solving
• These are built into portfolios for students to see their progress and reflect.
• On the platform they can earn points, badges and be immersed in a global community.

When educators engage:

• Educators can see student projects and portfolios to find evidence of learning and visible progress.
• They can use these for targeted instruction and personalized interactions with students and parents.

When parents engage

• They see greater excitement for learning and school from their children.
• They see clear evidence of learning of their kids through their projects and portfolio.

When mid-high level officials engage

• Policymakers and mid-to-high level officials can see a jump in foundational creativity and problem solving skills across their schools and institutions.
• They can identify bright spots and innovators from their districts to shine the light on and amplify their voice.
• They see greater employability in the long term.

We are career-teachers and serial entrepreneurs who are building Upepo. At every step along the way our pilots are designed, tested and iterated with the feedback from children. Even the name Upepo was chosen by our students. 

We have experience of:

• Being educated in Indian low-income public schools in India
• Being teachers in government schools and affordable private schools.
• Formal training in educational technology
• Experience of working on technological products at scale

We are also philosophically aligned to the idea of improving student learning at the grassroots since most edtech today is focussed only on the top 10% of socio economic groups.

• We want to sharpen our offering and be focussed on learning outcomes and scale.
• We want to collaborate with other organizations and amplify their existing impact.
• We want to raise pre-seed funding to test, iterate and improve our product.
• We want to be exposed to other peers who are solving education to get their feedback and input on our ideas and share in the energy of solving tough problems.

1. We are the first solution to use a hybrid model of high-tech, low-tech, + no-tech to truly address the needs of a large population.
2. We are focused on using play as a tool to foster problem-solving and creativity at scale and place as much importance on this as literacy and numeracy.
3. We use social peer-learning and gamification to drive high engagement.
4. We reduce information asymmetry by making learning visible for all stakeholders when a student builds a project.
5. We are capacity-builders and want to do this by introducing standardized frameworks and curricula

Over the next 5 years

• Improve creativity and problem-solving outcomes for 1 million students
• Introduce foundational creativity and problem-solving curriculum to 1 district/state-government body
• If each student did even 1 project we would build a repository of 1 million hands-on projects
• Fully build out our platform to serve a wider range of audiences in low-internet, shared-device contexts
• Establish partnerships with 10 other grassroots organizations to enhance their educational work 

1. Number of students on the platform
2. Number of educators and caregivers trained and using our curriculum
3. Number of projects made by students
4. Number of real-world problems solved and solutions submitted by students
5. Standard app engagement metrics - DAUs, MAUs, 
6. Percentage of time in a day spent on creativity/problem solving in schools/learning centers

Students

1. Learn from short videos/lessons, build projects hands-on, tinker with the world around them and share their ideas with their community.
2. They gain confidence and joy of creating something and inculcate critical habits of problem-solving and creativity on a regular basis.
3. In the short term, their learning is clearly visible and documented and they are able to take on open-ended challenges and projects.
4. In the long term, students use these skills to directly improve their lives and the lives of those around them either by becoming more employable or being more innovative and entrepreneurial.

Teachers

1. Teach open ended creativity and problem-solving on a regular basis to their students.
2. They believe in the potential of their students to be problem-solvers and innovators and see the importance for this in their instruction.
3. In the short term they implement creativity and problem-solving in their time-tables and lesson plans.
4. In the long term, they identify innovative students and unlock opportunities for them to unlesah their potential.

1. For the high-tech model we use mobile apps that run on android & iOS
2. For the low-tech model we use a web application / whatsapp to deliver content and training to those with limited tech access
3. For the no-tech model we use train the trainer model as well as worksheets and curriculum books.

Our approach to building our team has been to find diamonds in the rough - early career professionals who have the skills and portfolio but maybe lacking in credentials. These team members come from across the globe and work either as full-time, part-time or volunteers. We are considerate of different neurodivergent work-styles as well as welcome people from all backgrounds.