Sch0larship.net
A digital site in which the student can upload all the documents for the application of scholarships, without having to upload them to the admission pages of each academic institution.
In Latin America, there is a lot of misinformation about the educational opportunities that exist around the world, and this increases the chances that young people can not access national or international scholarships, for example in Colombia 6 out of 10 young people can not access higher education, according to the Ministry of Education of the country. The inaccessibility of education in the country hinders the quality of life of a citizen, especially in Latin America, where poverty and lack of opportunities are the most prevalent. Although this problem does not only affect young people but any person, since nowadays you must have a degree to get a decent job, as these are the conditions that society has imposed on us, this platform would help solve this problem to facilitate opportunities.
It consists of a simple use of the virtual platform in which you can upload a series of pre-established documents that would be required for the scholarships offered in the different academic institutions, all in such a way that you can choose the scholarship you want to apply for and at once the registration is complete. On the other hand, the website would show all the available scholarships. It would notify you when new ones are available, as well as inform you of news and deadlines to complete the registration on time, and in the same way, with the help of an algorithm and AI it will help you find the scholarships that fit your needs. Apart from the scholarships the platform would show a catalog of courses and digital tools such as videos and web pages to facilitate learning for all people, all the knowledge in one place and available to everyone. The best thing is that the technology used is soft, which includes database software and virtual artificial intelligence.
It is mainly dedicated to young people with limited resources in Latin America whose economic conditions do not allow them to pay for international education, although anyone could use the platform, it is for those sectors of communities that want to get ahead internationally, those that not even their government they are concerned about their well-being, that they do not have access to opportunities or education. Sholarship.net will be an essential tool for education and finding out about the opportunities that exist and that will also help them prepare to participate in these scholarships so that they can benefit from them and meet new places and people to achieve their professional goals, it will seek cover educational needs since people can organize their time according to their daily activities (for courses) and at the same time find out about new opportunities.
For now, I am working alone on this idea which is in concept form, but I believe I have the right skills to achieve the realization of this solution. I am an honest, hardworking, responsible, empathetic person, I am a person who is interested in and happy for the triumphs of others, and I get discouraged when for example I make a trip to some distant or hidden town, you can notice that many people when mention, something about their education, they say that they can not attend college or even finish high school because of the low living conditions in which they live, But this cannot be an excuse not to study, I understand perfectly well how difficult it can be to look for and find an opportunity, since I am now in this situation in which it seems that everything is blurry, so I consider myself the right person to handle this situation since I know and understand well the needs of people in my country or in Latin America. I have had the opportunity to assist foundations to do social work and teach English to low-income children but I don't think that is enough, on the other hand. At this moment I am taking the necessary courses to learn how to make a virtual platform, which is essential to attend to the needs of those I serve in the way this platform would do it.
It is not that I followed a list of specific steps to determine the idea of what the platform is, however, there were a series of situations that led me to the idea of creating it. Starting with the fact that I was researching an indigenous community in my country (Wayuu). In this type of community, they do not have access to education and only learn what the community does, and they are prevented from teaching them more things. This was the result of a trip I made to La Guajira and I realized the conditions in which they lived, as a result of this I participated as a volunteer in a foundation to teach English to low-income children, after that when I traveled I was determined to look for people in that situation to learn more details that could give an optimal solution and the idea came up. I would love to collaborate with an institution that could help me with the design and development of the project, however, I have not yet found someone who can suitably help me, for now, I am still focused on the content.
- Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.
- Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea.
The platform I propose brings an improvement to the system of websites that offer scholarships, as it would give a new approach in that it not only offers scholarships based on people's interests but also prepares users in advance to meet all assessed requirements, offers training and courses to help improve people's curriculum and the best thing is that it is totally without cost, perfect for those people who want to be educated but do not have the necessary resources. It is catalytic in that it brings together all the services that exist in various places into one place and in my own way, and it would also speed up the process of admission to scholarships for students. This could change the market but it can change the dynamic in which other sites work and thus work together for the greater good.
- Promote access to education through free digital tools so that low-income people can educate themselves and have good opportunities; I will strive to find people who want to collaborate with me who are experts in different fields to develop the courses, I will also ask my government for help to certify the courses so that they are valid anywhere.
- To put the site into operation In this case I will focus on making the platform, it is necessary to look for resources and look for agreements with the universities so that they inform me about their scholarships and publish them on the page, but also access to the university for that way that they have direct access to student documents without any problem.
- Being the most recognized scholarship platform in the field and having very good references from universities and users, more users join the platform and thus change the lives of people and students in an easier way. A serious way of promoting my platform and its benefits in networks and media, traveling and explaining to people what the process and benefits would be like.
My project is based on a better education accessible to all, for this, we rely on using existing enhanced technology such as artificial intelligence and software technology. The former (AI) refers to systems or machines that mimic human intelligence to perform tasks and can iteratively improve the information they gather. AI in our project is going to manifest itself in various forms. Some examples are Chatbots that will use AI to understand customer problems faster and provide more efficient responses. On the other hand, Intelligent assistants will use AI to analyze critical information from large free-text data sets to improve the readability of the data provided. and finally, recommendation engines, will provide automated recommendations for scholarships or courses based on users' viewing habits, which will work for personalized targeting and customer service. The second (software) database stores each person's records and files. Along with programming software for the online course platform.
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Audiovisual Media
- Big Data
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Colombia
At the moment my idea is not implemented and for now, it is only a concept, however, in a year I aspire to serve more than 10000 people in my country. It may not sound much but in my opinion, it is better to start with personalized attention by communities, and it would be using the Beta version since the project has not yet been launched.
Many factors prevent me from introducing my idea to the market, the main one is that I have few financial resources to sustain the project in a better way, secondly, I do not have the necessary equipment or knowledge of software programming and application of other technologies, however, I plan to learn during these months. Due to the fact for now, I am alone in the project I do not have partners who could support me to move the project forward faster. Concerning the market, it may be difficult for the idea to be recognized by many people since there is so much misinformation, besides it is not easy to capture international attention so that more people can embrace the idea, this limits a lot of the agreements with universities and the acceptance by the same ones.
Scholarship.net as a company is not collaborating with any institutions at the moment so it does not have any partners. However, it plans to partner with Colombian universities to start with, and then we will partner with universities or educational institutions in other countries.
My path to financial sustainability will be based on offering software programming services to entities that require it, on the other hand, we would also include database services and platform design consultancy. We would also like to call the attention of governments so that they can help us with financial support so that the platform has visibility in more countries, on the other hand, provide my services to prestigious universities and non-profit foundations, if they are interested they could finance educational scholarships for millions of people in the world.
Investing in the stock market, in recognized brands and world currencies would be a good option to obtain profits for our project and thus we would obtain more visibility in other different markets. Of course, donations will be of great help to students around the world who want to get ahead.