Origin Learning Fund

Origin Learning Fund is a start-up and NGO registered both in Colombia and the US dedicated to facilitating access to digital education opportunities for underrepresented youth worldwide. We started our mission in La Guajira, one of the most complex regions in Colombia, home to one of the largest indigenous, refugee and afro-descendant communities in Latin America. There, less than 30% of children finish school and only 5% have the resources to enroll in higher education. Our projects aim at providing pre-school, primary and secondary education children, indicatively aged between 2 to 16 with access to inclusive, quality digital education. All the boys and girls that we reach with our program come from complex backgrounds, where often the lack of institutional support and serious connectivity issues deny them access to quality education, fuelling a cycle of poverty that repeats itself across generations. 

We are striving to achieve our goals with our solution, O-lab. O-lab is a customizable set of digital solutions which, since its launch in 2015, helped rural schools and grassroots organizations to make their curricula and activities compatible on a digital platform and offer their beneficiaries a quality educational pathway. Through O-lab, we have also helped corporations and international organizations to manage education and social projects with ease and engage efficiently with the community impacted. Thanks to O-lab, our partners can build education programs through a wide variety of contents that can be customized according to the beneficiaries needs: audio, videos, interactive contents, surveys, game-based learning forms, illustrative and dynamic images. O-lab is an inclusive, adaptable, and engaging platform. It is a no-code application working both on mobile and web on lightweight and low-cost devices, and users can access the contents both on and offline. We created personalized virtual avatars/tutors that resemble the physical, emotional, and cultural features of our beneficiaries (in most of the case young people) guiding them in the learning process in a dynamic and familiar environment, reproducing the lectures in every language worldwide, including the indigenous tongue. 

In regard to this specific project, we want to provide at-risk indigenous and refugee kids from under-resourced rural areas aged between 2-12 with access to digital complementary education (21st century skills and basic English), STEAM courses, and diversity, inclusivity, and gender educational courses through O-lab. Courses will take place both during (we are allowed to run our activities for two hours a week in schools) school hours and in our/ partners' after-school education centers. Many of our beneficiaries are children who are not enrolled in school and their families do not have the means to support a school enrolment. Our educational plan will also continue in children's homes, parents will be able to download the O-lab app and support their children in learning courses and doing homework. 

Our solution was born with the desire to solve a complicated problem affecting our community in Guajira, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela: the serious lack of quality education among the least represented communities. Origin Learning Fund and our app, O-lab, were born when Tania Rosas, CEO and co-founder, studied during her thesis the reasons why young people were remaining in this cycle of poverty. It turned out that the main cause of the hardships was that the younger ones were following the example of their older siblings, who, in most cases, dropped out of school due to a lack of structural educational support and serious problems of connectivity and lack of information, remaining unemployed and without expectation. O-lab was therefore created to address this problem and to create an alternative educational model with a strong digital component that invests in the real fact that mobile penetration even in less represented areas is now high and allows children and teachers to use O-lab to build an education, even offline, and train the new generations. Before launching our solution and creating the design we have conducted exhaustive surveys, qualitative and quantitative studies, and an information ecosystem assessment involving rural schools, grassroots organizations, and local institutions in La Guajira to better frame the needs of our future beneficiaires and take into account cultural, social and economic, and institutional biases. Whenever we kick-off a new pilot project, as it happened in Nigeria, Pakistan, or Mexico, we always make sure to involve our local partners in the designation of the courses to be created on O-lab and assess with them the needs of the beneficiaries/community impacted with digital courses. Origin Learning Fund does not directly manage the courses on O-lab and guide the young people in the educational process, but we let teachers or community leaders follow the students on O-lab, once we have trained them in the use of the application. We monitor that the educational process takes place correctly. 

1=Improved Education 

2=Community Empowerment    

3=Creation of knowledge and raising public awareness 

Activities: 

1. Our customizable on and offline application, O-Lab makes personalized and inclusive educational courses and vocational training for at-risk students that have encountered a large gap in information technology and quality education. Although O-Lab is installable in low-cost devices, we may require providing beneficiaries with the necessary tools (considering that, according to a recent report from the Gallup World Poll, 79% of people living in developing countries have a mobile phone).

2. Together with our partners (private schools, universities, NGOs, corporations, rural schools) we co-create the educational courses with the direct involvement of local teachers, who can personalize and edit contents and academic curriculum according to each student's requirements. 

3. Through O-Lab Analytics, our monitoring, evaluation and learning system, we gather data related to student’s development which is matched with indicators automatically and then shared with our pedagogues and partner universities to provide qualitative and quantitative academic reports for teachers, sponsors, and governments.

Outputs:

1. The education level of at-risk students has improved thanks to the language and context-adaptable application which guarantees children/young people to continue learning activities offline. Thanks to investments in AI to further personalize our app, the connectivity between teachers and students will increase, encouraging the latter to continue their education through the App. This will result in decreasing dropouts from high schools, an improvement in the access to digital education, and a reinforcement of emotional relations between young learners and teachers. (To date data from fields direct sources: 8 out of 10 beneficiaries further their education through O-lab; according to several pre/post tests we have conducted specifically, we found out that more than 50% of beneficiaries improve their performance and skills to thrive in today's economy)

2. The co-created educational courses have strengthened teachers’ self-esteem and their role as educators and reference point within the community. More and more students have enrolled in specific training and vocational courses designed and available on O-Lab, raising awareness of economic and social issues that harm their communities.  (To date data from fields’ direct sources: 8 out of 10 accessed to social projects and programs created by partners through O-lab; we conducted a qualitative survey on 100 students that use O-lab, and they have all affirmed that they feel more prepared to transition to the workforce and lead solutions in their communities)

3. The accuracy of our quantitative and qualitative reports has improved, and we are able to identify and assess weaknesses, achievements, and impacts of our activities. We can disseminate our findings to a broader audience, the public and potential partners gain full awareness of the big purpose of our project: empowering future generations’ leaders from indigenous groups and under resource communities.

Short-term outcomes:

1. Our AI personalized programming has fully developed to adapt O-Lab to each user automatically (including native tongue and cultural approach). A relevant percentage of beneficiaries reached (100.000) has access to higher education across 30 countries of operation.

2. Co-created training and vocational courses continue to increase among the communities we are active in and attract more and more students to take a decisive role in the economic and social transformation of their context. there will be a significant increase in the number of students directly managing a local project via O-Lab. (To date data from fields’ direct sources: 5 out of 10 led a project in their communities guided by O-lab).

3. The urban population of our countries of operation become more aware of the educational issues affecting rural areas, starting to adopt a change of values and approach towards communities facing hardship due to a digital education gap

Long-term outcomes

1. The efforts in accelerating our automatization process will allow us to build the first sustainable rural school fully monitored by O-Lab AI. We have built a model that reaches half a million beneficiaries in 60 countries, of which many of these have enrolled at university and have bridged the digital education gap with peers who do not live in under-resourced rural communities. 

2. By conferring expertise and knowledge though our tailored courses, we have built a new generation of young leaders from underrepresented communities that have succeeded in bringing valuable local solutions to social/economic issues affecting their realities, and they are able to scaling up their solving model regionally and globally

3. The large public accepts and acknowledges our solution as a large-scale, adaptable solution to social/educational problems worldwide

Nesta’s Standards of Evidence - level 3: “You can demonstrate that your  We will consider robust methods using a control group  intervention is causing the impact, by  (or another well justified method) that begin to isolate  showing less impact amongst those  the impact of the product/service”. 

The evidence we integrate throughout our projects is observed through the following methods: 

• O-lab Analytics: our Monitor, Evaluation and Learning app system (described more in-depth in the next question)

• Pre and Post operating environment analysis

• Weekly on the ground Monitoring Visits and qualitative assessment (surveys, interviews, ecosystem information assessment)

In our education-tech projects we have often used the following indicators to assess (through trainers test/homework’s evaluation) the evidence/impact of our project on the beneficiaries involved

• Basic Learning Rights

• Socio-Emotional Cross-Sectional Competencies

• Basic Cross-Sectional Competencies

• 21st Century Digital Competencies 

Our (broader) impacts to date, which encompass over 10000 beneficiaries worldwide (taking into account only direct beneficiaries, which means at-risk youth aged between 2-20) show that: 

• 8 out of 10 beneficiaries (who were at risk of dropping out or already not enrolled) continued their education 

• 8 out of 10 have been certified in at least one complementary educational course 

• 5 out of 10 started a STEAM or vocational-entrepreneurial course guided through O-lab 

We measure the impact of our solution through our app incorporated Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation (MEL) system, O-lab Analytics. This section allows us and our partners to set and personalize project indicators and download qualitative/quantitative reports assessing our beneficiaires educational outcomes/progress/weaknesses. It ensures that relevant progress and performance information is collected, processed and analyzed on a regular basis to allow for real-time, evidence-based decision-making. 

Main indicators to track progress: 

• Number of at-risk youths accessing digital education for the first time

• Number of at-risk girls accessing digital education for the first time

• number of teachers/community leaders/family members/local officials in vulnerable communities trained in digital skills 

• number of female teachers/community leaders/family members/local officials in vulnerable communities trained in digital skills 

• Number of languages (special focus on indigenous languages) incorporated in a digital education tool

• Socio-Emotional Cross-Sectional Competencies acquired

• Basic Cross-Sectional Competencies acquired

• 21st Century Digital Competencies acquired

• Improvement of educational school outcomes

• Increased/decreased level of school dropout

• Number of young beneficiaries who start an educational/social project to solve community’s issue guided through O-lab

• Number of cases where Access to job, leadership and entrepreneurship opportunities have increased among our beneficiaries

We Provide access for indigenous and migrant children to quality complementary education with an ethnic and differential approach, through the use of O-lab, our offline, customizable training inclusive application.

We would like LEAP Fellows to help us answer and validate the following research question: 

How can we test and make more effective and empirically robust our alternative education system aimed at unrepresented children and young people, which includes a strong digital component, so that our results are comparable to an institutional education or that it actually fills in the young people with those gaps caused by the absence of quality education? 

Deliverables as outputs:

• First of all, we would like to review with you our action plans and the goals we have set for the short and long term, and consult with you to see whether we can re-evaluate our strategy or continue on the path we have set. 

• We need your managerial expertise to define objectives and milestones that we can realistically achieve in the short and medium term. We will need your help to validate and advise on SMART and SWOT realistic analysis.These lessons will be key for us in order to develop future fund/alliance proposals more in line with our stretch and capabilities.

• We want to improve our ability to convey a stronger connection to the evidence of our results and impact. That is why we are looking for mentors who can help us improve our MEL system with more effective indicators and how to gather key information for our project. 

We are applying for this opportunity because we are convinced that your leading expertise in refining innovative solutions can strengthen our team’s capacity-building and provide the right mentoring to achieve our goal of scaling up our project to 30 countries and reaching 200,000 direct beneficiaries in the next five years. We also believe that your network and connections offering, together with your research and entrepreneurial long-standing expertise, is instrumental to build key partnerships to expand strategically our activities in areas of our interest and share best practices with young innovators working on similar challenges. As a team of young, passionate innovators we firmly believe in the potentiality and further enforceability of our project, but we are looking for senior mentoring and strategic advice from your cross-sectoral experts’ community to guide and inspire us in our search for market opportunities and recommend tailor-made support.