Knowledge Unbound

Around 5000 schools in Mumbai and around 168 million children around the world were severely impacted due to covid-19 restrictions. Most of these schools did not have resources and knowledge on how to operate through online medium. The teachers did not have any material which they could use for teaching. They lacked the capabilities for preparing the same. They did not have enough time to prepare the content. Only the bigger private school had the resources and knowledge to start their online classes. This led to a situation where the majority of the schools did not open or got opened with a considerable delay.

We also spoke to students who had access to online classes and found that the learning and understanding was poor. Many schools just shot a video for students to watch.  They needed a one on one interaction for guidance and support. They needed someone to whom they could put up their queries and share their feelings

We looked at the problem of how to ensure schools can provide online classes and students have someone who could support them.

Due to pandemic restrictions schools were shut down and only online classes were permitted. In Mumbai, the teaching community did not have resources to teach and support their student’s online learning. This resulted in many schools remaining closed. The students who had access to online classes were facing problems in grasping concepts and needed to interact with someone who could solve their doubts.

At Knowledge Unbound we have student volunteers of age 14-18 who make and offer free high-quality resources like youtube videos, chapter notes, worksheets, answers key, interactive simulators, interactive games, quizzes, crosswords etc. The resources are published online at our website www.knowledgeunbound.weebly.com .This enabled teachers to start their classes online. Knowledge Unbound student volunteers also tuition to other students who avail our services to solve doubts, teach concepts or discuss any other problem. This not just benefited the students and educators who availed our services to bridge learning gaps but those students who are currently volunteering at our organization benefited immensely. Our student volunteers researched topics in depth for creating content and tutoring others which deepened their knowledge of the subject and they also got the opportunity to get real world work experience which allowed them to explore their interests.

If we scale up then more student volunteers will be part of our organization which and more educators can make use of these resources. We can make content for more subjects and grades. The material can be made to fulfill local requirements and in local languages. Scaling up will also help us to receive funds in form of donations, grants, investments which will help us offer better technical equipments such as laptops, mics, headphones, speakers, writing pads etc to our student volunteers for them to not just be able to help the community better but also use those equipments for their own education.   

Our current target audience is educators, students and parents who are facing challenges in the online education world. Teachers have access to ready made resources which they can use while teaching their students. It will help schools starting their classes in a much quicker time. It is helping those teachers who do not know how to prepare material as well as save their time. The worksheets, simulators etc help teachers in making class interactive and entertaining. This has made equitable teaching where it is no longer a privilege of rich students to have innovative and interactive learning tools. We target also underprivileged students who cannot afford private tuition. They now have access to volunteers who are ready to support them as per the time convenient to them. This has helped poor kids who want tuition at nights. Students also get emotional and career support which is currently missing in the current educational set up

All of our volunteers are high school who understand various subjects and the problems which students face. Our effort is to make content in a manner that we lacked while studying in middle and high school. We want to make learning interactive, entertaining and easy to grasp which we missed as middle and high school students. We are using our own experiences to deliver this solution and as fellow students we understand the needs and limitations of the current education system.

We work daily to improve our current services by analyzing the problems the students or educators might be facing with academics. We survey and interact with teachers, students, volunteers, parents to understand the loopholes of the education system and we work towards the solutions by discussing with them that what do they feel missing from the current academic structure and what do they think are best for them. 

We are applying to Solve so that our organization gets a wider audience and acceptance. On the Solve platforms,there are many experienced entrepreneurs, investors, educators, innovators and students who may get to know about our global solution and through Solve would help us on our venture by providing their valuable support and guidance. The support could be in terms of being able to provide us mass networks through which we could partner with other esteemed organizations and schools working in same space, provide their guidance on legal matters, help us apply for grants/donations and join our ventures as partners or volunteers .

In India, almost all school and teachers are adept at teaching the traditional classroom way. The remote learning and using the digital medium to teach is a privilege of elites only. The teachers do not know how to move to the digital/remote teaching platform therefore during lockdown only the elite private schools were providing learning opportunities. We provide innovative tools of learnings like simulators, digital quiz, learning games, lessons, videos etc for free and to all and thus enabling equitable learning. These innovative and new tools make remote learning fun and entertaining. These tools are different from traditional classroom teaching where a teacher had only a blackboard and books as helping tools. We provide experiential learning which is a combination of audio, visual and hands-on simulators. This enables students to learn at any time and at their own pace. On our platform we have developed a peer chatroom where students from all over the world can come and discuss academic doubts and help each other in resolving those doubts.

In one year we hope to introduce a new STEM innovation extracurricular activity for underprivileged students where we personally reach out to and tie up with at least 50 schools and around 1000 students around the globe where we perform different STEM based experiments to help students understand concepts better for example performing water bottle rocket experiment for students to understand Physics in a more interactive and fun manner. In next five years we hope that our solution is implemented in every asian schools.

We measure our immediate progress with the following parameters

• Number of subjects for which material is ready
• Number of grades for which study material is ready
• Number of chapters for which study material is ready
• Number of schools which are using our material
• Number of students signed up for our tutorial service

When I started Knowledge Unbound, I was in grade 11th and that is the time when the pandemic was started. I was always an academic enthusiast and at top bracket of my class but the reason of why me and many students around the world were struggling to grasp concepts and maintain top academic grades at start of pandemic was that the education system which was so traditional and not so updated to keep up with the pandemic crippled and thus the educators faced immense difficulty in restarting classes to deliver same education to their students. 

I understood that the learning and educational gaps were forming in students academic journey due to students not being able to receive one on one attention from the teacher nor they were being able to get ample time or opportunities with teacher who could guide them on how to solve a particular question which they got wrong as the digital literacy of educators were very low. Students in India, have a very traditional restrictive style of education where they learn the concepts for the sake of completion and do not get opportunity to intern or volunteer in real world to explore different career interests and passion.

To tackle this issue the solution brought by Knowledge Unbound organization where students of high school get opportunities to do an volunteering internship at Knowledge Unbound in various teams such as content creators, tutoring, hr and communication, marketing, social media designing, video editing etc helps them in exploring their career interests and apply their academic learning in a real world business space. This  volunteering internship also helps them in strengthening their resume for job and college applications. The solution services which Knowledge Unbound offers to educators such as offering personalized educational materials has helped educators restart their digital classes efficiently, the free tutoring and doubt solving sessions have helped the students in learning and discussing problems in a safe, efficient manner and the peer consultation services have helped man students make friends from all over the world and discuss their life problems. 

Our organization has a website which is made by HTML, CSS and Javascript. Our solutions our powered by audiovisual media, internet of things and software mobile application. 

Our organization is a student-lead startup. Our current organizations has 60 student volunteers based in 40 different countries, including all the continents in the world taking care of various aspects. Our organization currently has equal number of male and female volunteers and our volunteers are passionate students who want to bring a positive change in the current system and it does not matter to us what their color, gender, creed or nationality is. 

The main customers we serve our students, educators and parents. As discussed before, we offer them free, high quality study resources and tutoring services. Our organization is run by student volunteers who help us offer these free resources. As we do not pay our student volunteers our cost of running the organization is none. The community needs our services because there is a high demand for our solution, as we already been serving them for over two years there is a high trust been formed with our customers. 

Our plan to become financially stable is to start monetizing our current services for a cheaper option than what the similar services provider offer in the community. As the trust has been forged with our customers, our customers will be willing to pay for our services as they know that we will be improving our current services with those funds and the life of student volunteers will also improve. 

We also plan to apply for grants and donations. We do hope to contact investors too who will not just fund our business but also offer us a lot of guidance.

Currently we are financially sustainable as currently the cost of running the organization is none.

All our business actions such as marketing strategies, social media designs etc were created in zero money.

We created our videos and content for free as those were created by student volunteers and the website was also developed for free.

The main form of investment in our business has been of time.