LearnEd

LearnED is a digital platform that aggregates and distributes the most relevant educational content from Cameroon’s top colleges to Cameroonians, regardless of their location or socioeconomic status.

A significant percentage of Cameroonian youth according to WENR (World Education News + Reviews) are unable to access higher education, due in part to the high cost of tuition at Private Universities and overcrowded classrooms at Public universities.

The country’s public university system is struggling with an increasing number of students seeking admission, while private universities are also not meeting the demand (financially) for higher education.

The University of Buea, Cameroon's largest public university, has a student population of over 25,000 students but only has space for about 7,500.

This has led to increasing rates of dropouts and non-completion among young people, with many ending up unemployed. A recent study by the Cameroonian National Institute for Statistics (INS) showed that over 20% of Cameroonians aged 15 to 29 are neither employed nor in school or training.

This puts Cameroon at risk of losing an entire generation of youth, who could otherwise be the country’s future leaders in government, business and academia.

LearnEd is an online university with a mission to connect the unconnected and provide quality education to youth in Cameroon. The goal of LearnEd is to create a world-class, affordable, accredited and accessible university by 2023. 

LearnEd aims to reduce the dropout rate among young people in Cameroon by providing them with opportunities that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to due to financial constraints, distance or time constraints.

LearnEd will offer online degrees in the following areas: 

-Business and Management

-Information Technology

-Humanities and Social Sciences

-Education

LearnEd will also offer professional certificates, diplomas and degrees that can be earned through a combination of online studies and face to face mentoring with faculty members.

LearnEd will be the first accredited online university in Cameroon and has the potential to impact a large number of young people. This project will allow us to reach out to the unconnected youth and provide them with quality education at an affordable price.

Also, through our Partnership with JeBoulot (The Cameroon-Based freelance platform), students with good results on our platform will be given a verified status on the JeBoulot freelance Platform to enable them start a freelance job on their own. 

As an online university, we provide students with high quality education at a fraction of the cost of traditional institutions by eliminating the need for physical classrooms and other infrastructure associated with brick-and-mortar schools. This saves students money and employers' overhead costs. 

We also offer courses that can be completed in as little as six months, making it easy for busy people to fit their education into their lives.

Our solution serves those who wish to pursue higher education but cannot afford it and people, who are unable to attend traditional universities due to their physical disabilities.  

It also benefits students who want a flexible education, allowing them to study at their own pace and in a manner that fits their busy schedules.

We aim to improve their lives by providing quality and affordable education in a flexible manner which they can access at any time of the day or night.

We also provide flexible payment plans so that our students do not have to worry about paying for school fees every term.

Our solution improves lives because it provides young people with access to education, which helps them develop their professional careers later on in life.

We have a team of highly motivated and dedicated people who are passionate about the cause.

Our team consists of students with expertize in the fields of technology, education, and research who are committed to providing affordable quality education to every student.

We have been working on this project for a while now and we have built a strong foundation which will help us deliver our solution when the time comes.

We are also building relationships with major organisations, who are willing to help us with their resources.  

We have conducted a number of interviews with University students and others who are currently studying at the university. We also talked to parents to understand their needs better. 

The project will be the first accredited online university in Cameroon and has the potential to impact a large number of young people.

It will allow us to reach out to the youths and provide them with quality education at an affordable price. We believe that this will help change the lives of many young people in Cameroon who cannot afford to go to an accredited university or college.

Our students will be able to earn an accredited degree through our online platform. The courses will be developed by highly qualified teachers who have years of experience teaching in Cameroonian institutions.

We are aiming to help 1,000 students especially drop outs complete high school education or a Course in Cameroon.

We will do this by setting very affordable prices on our educational services and by providing students with rewards for successful completion of their courses.

The rewards will come in the form of vouchers that can be redeemed for goods or services from our partners or discounts on future courses.

The goal is to provide an affordable, high-quality education for as many people as possible. Our plan is to first start in Cameroon, then expand our reach across Africa.

We plan to build both a Web App and a Mobile Application that will allow students to sign up for courses and access the learning materials. Our Web App will be an LMS built on top of a content management system (CMS) WordPress. Our mobile app will be developed using flutter and will be available on both Android and iOS.

500+ People next year.

Firstly, alot of Cameroonians are skeptical about Online activities so, we will need to convince them and make them understand that this is a real opportunity for them.

Secondly, we will need financial support for the development of the web app and mobile app as well as for the marketing campaign that will be used to promote it. We will also need to pay the developers and our employees.

Lastly, we will need to find a way to make the app work on low-end smartphones so that it can be used by everyone

We have contacts with JeBoulot, a freelance Platform for Cameroonians.

The best students on our platform will receive free verification and a rated Top on the JeBoulot platform so they can start working as soon as possible.

1. Segment

Our solution is beneficial to students, parents and teachers. Students can get access to quality education at an affordable price. Parents will no longer have to pay large sums of money for their children’s education. Teachers also benefit from our solution because they are able earn money while working remotely.

2. Type of Intervention

A Service

3. Value Proposition

Our Platform will offer a faster, flexible, and more cost-effective way for students to get an accredited degree and certificates. Students can earn their degrees in much less time than they would if they were enrolled at a physical university in Cameroon. 

Our platform also makes it possible for teachers to work remotely while earning a salary. This means they don’t have to move away from their families and hometowns just so they can teach.

4. Customer

Our customers are students who are willing to pay for our online degrees and certificate programs.

Also, some universities or teachers will pay to offer some of their courses on the platform.  

5. Customer Value Proposition

Our customers get the same quality education as they would at a physical university, but they don’t have to move away from their homes or families.

They will also have flexibility in choosing the time of their classes, which means they can work full-time jobs while still getting an education.

This is something natural in developing countries where alot of students work in the day and school at night.

We also offer them a flexible payment plan so that they only pay for what they need when they need it.

6. Key Activities

Our key activities will be to recruit teachers, provide online courses & frequently communicate with our students.

We will also need to market our product in order to get people interested in what we are offering through social media, email and campaigns.

Our website will be constantly maintained to fix bugs and other issues so as to create a good user experience for both our students and Instructors.

7. Key Resources

These are the key resources which will enable us get started:

• Hire a team of developers and designers to help build an online learning platform.

• Graphic designers, and marketing experts to market our services using several channels.

• Teachers who can create the courses.

• We will need financial resources to hire the team, create course content and market our platform. 

• Rent a place to house our team and use it as a work space. 

8. Key Partners

Our Key Partners include:

-The marketing agency who will be key to our success. They will help us with our marketing efforts and acquisition of both instructors and students.

-Our Web and Mobile Developers who will be responsible for building our online learning platform from scratch so that we can start accepting students and tutors on it.

-Investors who will be willing to provide us with the necessary funding so that we can grow our company.

-Our Tutors who will help teach students online and make sure that they are learning what they need to learn in order to succeed.

9. Cost Structure

-Hosting

-Sales and Marketing

-Salaries

-Website Building and Maintainance

-Rent 

10. Revenue Streams

- Student Tuition 

-Registration Fees

- Mentoring

We hope we can win the Microgrant Awards and get the funds to kickstart the project. Otherwise, we will have to find alternative ways to get funding for our project such as:

• Savings: We will save up some money that will help us get started. We will use this to pay for the development of the website, the rent and other costs until we can bring in revenue from our online learning platform.

• Fundraising campaign : We are planning to launch a fundraising campaign where we can raise money from other people who want to support us in building an online learning platform for high school students.

• Crowdsourcing: We are planning to launch a crowdsourcing campaign where we can raise money from other people who want to support us in building an online learning platform for high school students.

• Other: We will also look at other ways to get funding such as competitions where we can win capital to get started.

If it all goes to plan, and we develop the site, we will get customers through the following ways:

-Hire a marketing agency to help us with our marketing strategy. The agency will work with us to understand our target market, create a brand identity and build a plan to reach them through various channels such as social media, email marketing, SEO, pay per click ads, Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and LinkedIn ads to reach a wider audience.

The marketing agency will also help us create content for our blog which we can use to engage readers and drive traffic back to our platform.

The goal will be to attract as many Instructors and students as possible.

The marketing agency will be key to our success. We will need to find a marketing agency that can help us with our marketing efforts. In order to do this, we will have to look at the different agencies in town and see which ones are best suited for our needs.