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Organization & Team Lead Details

Project Details

Describe the product or program that is the focus of your proposed LEAP project.

The Marina Orth Foundation during more than 15 years of experience supporting the public education sector in the country, has worked in all stages of the educational cycle. For this specific project called Techlish, it focuses on working with elementary school students or children between 8 and 12 years of age, in El Carmen de Viboral, Rionegro and La Ceja, Antioquia, Colombia; with a quantitative impact of 200 to 250 participants and for 8 months and 60 hours of training in total. This responds to a marked need evidenced in the established contexts that can be summarized in three focal points: 1. To have new strategies for the rapid cognitive reactivation of students (post-pandemic), who were affected by the lack of connectivity, illiteracy of parents, and low availability of technological resources, among others; with which the Marina Orth Foundation (FMO) worked alongside public institutions supporting teachers for distance learning. The strengthening of English as a foreign language, with a strategy different from the traditional ways of teaching the language, which uses an innovative and striking theme for students such as robotics and introduces it in the course, taking advantage of the proximity of technology with English, so that students do not have a previous disposition to work with English and can create a friendly and natural environment for learning it. The development of socio-emotional skills will allow them to recover their academic training processes, be competent for the market, and be aligned with the 21st century. Therefore, the Foundation has been able to focus on 4 specific skills that provide students with tools to transform their realities: critical thinking, problem-solving, communication skills, and teamwork. The strategy of the Foundation's English-language robotics clubs is multicultural, diverse, and integral spaces that challenge students to solve common problems, expose and support ideas and work alongside others towards the same goal.

Select the key characteristics of your target population. Select all that apply.

Women & Girls
Primary school children (ages 5-12)
Rural
Low-Income

In which countries do you currently operate?

Colombia

In which countries do you plan to be operating within the next year?

Colombia

How have you worked with affected communities to design your solution?

The Marina Orth Foundation has been present in Medellin and El Carmen de Viboral for more than fifteen years, supporting education in several public educational institutions in vulnerable sectors of the region. During this time, we have supported processes in all stages of the educational cycle developing academic programs under the lines of English, technology, and socio-emotional skills, integrating the community of these sectors.

Likewise, during the time of home study, derived from the pandemic, we worked with around 2500 students, which has allowed us to evidence first-hand the needs that have been generated in the target population with which the TECHLISH project was born such as the low levels of English as a foreign language of students in the public sector evidenced in the results of the PISA and ICFES tests, and the negative impact of the intermittent training processes of 60% of the students served.

In short, the community was integrated from the search for solutions to the identified needs: During the work developed, as support to 'learning from home' with educational institutions, students and parents, we have implemented several strategies to mitigate the negative impact on the education of children and youth. These support strategies allowed us to gather information about the main needs that can be addressed and supported by the Foundation's mission work. In addition, the response of the communities to the strategies implemented during the isolation period led to a focus on those actions that could have the greatest relevance and impact on the needs raised.

What is your theory of change?

How are you currently using evidence within your theory of change?

For the Techlish project, the course methodology allows testing at the beginning and development of the program of knowledge related to robotics and English, and at the end a sample of a final project aligned with the program standards.

The measurement of the progress, results, and impact of the project is done in 3 ways: 1) Quantitative and qualitative measurement of the progress in knowledge and learning of students through comparative knowledge tests through an initial and final application and a comparative analysis of the results; 2) Measurement of the development of the proposed skills through the evaluation with the rubric of final products (prototypes) and application of cases to the participants, and 3) Measurement of short-term impact through surveys of perception, satisfaction, applicability and projection of what has been learned.

The Marina Orth Foundation in its experience with education in Colombia and work in vulnerable communities have developed capacities for the collection, organization, and evaluation of projects. In this sense, for the Techlish project, there is a professional on the team who has the knowledge and experience to collect, organize and evaluate the information required to obtain the expected results. The evidence is integrated into the project's Logical Framework as part of the project's monitoring and evaluation process, complying with the selected indicators. According to Nesta's Evidence Standards, the current level of evidence integration is 3.

How are you currently tracking and measuring your solution’s impact?

One-line project summary:

Robotics clubs in English to children aged 8-12 from rural and vulnerable communities for post-pandemic cognitive activation.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth

LEAP Project Pitch