GenEd Innovation Program

Indonesia's low PISA literacy rates demonstrates that its future generation do not possess foundational skills to innovate. A study of Indonesian Junior High School Students (JHS) Reading Literacy Assessment suggested that most JHS only master reading skill of identifying factual data from text (the lowest skill) and not yet reach the critical and creative reading skill when those are the fundamental skills for a future changemaker to have.

This translates directly to OECD’s data of only 1% of adults in Jakarta having high proficiency in literacy (compared to 10% average OECD), and moderate proficiency only accounts to 5% of adults (compared to 35% average OECD).

Solving complex and urgent societal issues of the 4th Industrial revolution, requires continuous innovation, grounded in Information Literacy and Design Thinking. Information literacy is necessary to identify, filter and define the most pressing issues of today; while Design Thinking is key to produce the most viable solutions.

This large gap is a direct consequence of Indonesia's education system that historically overlooks its teacher quality and preparedness. Indonesian teachers have not been equipped with the right strategies to develop students' literacy, critical & design thinking skills. 

Unfortunately, not only do teachers in Indonesia undergo only 2 days of professional development per year, but any accessible training rarely cover Guided Reading strategies and Design Thinking principles. Without these trainings, it will be impossible for teachers to help students successfully innovate and solve future problems. 

Teachers then push for reading fluency rather than critical thinking; and Students are taught to implement existing plans rather than design new solutions.

As current primary students will become future leaders in 2050, there is an imminent and urgent need to develop these skills today to ensure a fully engaged future generation. More so than books or building new schools, Indonesia is in most urgent need of equipping teachers with strategies in Guided Reading and Design thinking, which are the foundations for students to solve complex problems and become fully engaged in their communities.

Imagine if all Indonesian students are able to navigate, filter and refine a wealth of information in this digital age, and use it to create innovative solutions that will benefit their communities? Students will be much more prepared to lead social initiatives and conquer real world challenges. 

In cooperation with various CSR initiatives, GenEd’s Innovation Program offers the first educator training in Indonesia which specifically assists teachers to directly apply Guided Reading and Design Thinking strategies in the classroom; and deliberately encourage civic action by solving imminent issues of their communities. 

The program span 12-weeks, where teachers receive online and offline trainings on 1) how to create a great class newspaper; 2) which will then influence the design thinking process to create viable solutions for their communities. 

The trained teachers will invite and guide students to think about civic engagement solutions to UNSDG issues on selected topics (such as climate change or food sustainability) within their own community and explore if they can digitize their solutions. 

Once students submit their design-thinking-based solution for a city-wide competition, the selected Best Article and Most Viable Solution are granted awards (and may be connected to GenEd’s industry partners who may further scale the solutions). 

These students will not only understand what it takes to be a problem solver, but also the urgency of UNSDG issues, and the importance of incorporating technology in their solution. 

The program adds value to any adopted curriculum at low cost, as it effectively helps students acquire and apply literacy, critical & design thinking skills.

In addition to the offline/online trainings, teachers have open access to GenEd's digital portal comprising of asynchronous modules, digital libraries of best teaching practices, learning tools (guidelines/exercise worksheets) and industry networking opportunities to gain a holistic understanding of Guided Reading strategies and Design Thinking principles.

You may access our platform here and further details here.

Currently, GenEd has entered into a non-exclusive, long-term cooperation agreement with the Local Government Education Board in the City of Bandung to identify underserved government-owned K-12 schools and under trained teachers in the West Java province. 

For the 2022-2023 academic year, GenEd onboarded approximately 426+ teachers and principals from 274 primary state schools in Bandung City.

Based on initial training performance, 50+ educators (1000+ students) are further selected to receive exclusive support and coaching from GenEd until the end of the academic period. 

In light of the above, our current findings show that:

• The overall academic staff have significantly improved practical teacher’s skills in teaching reading comprehension, critical thinking, and problem solving 

• Respective teachers saw significant improvement in student engagement during reading activities and in problem solving. 

• Strong indication of higher student understanding of UNSDG issues within their community, the strategies to come up with solutions, and incorporate technology within their solutions.

• Strong Indication of higher acknowledgment of student’s sense of agency and power to make meaningful change in their community.

Please revert to the following links for testimonials and feedback from our educator participants.

Overall, we believe that the program will continue to empower teachers to meaningfully reinvent the way they teach, and more adequately equip students to solve current and future problems. 

Leading from the success of this year’s program, the Local Government Educator Board for City of Bandung has agreed to extend the program for the 2023-2024 academic year, and to onboard 250 teachers from the remaining 50+ secondary and high government-owned schools.

Further, we hope to continue to expand our programs to other underserved cities and provinces across Indonesia.

GenEd is well positioned to deliver our solution for the following reasons:

• Since 2022, GenEd entered into a long-term cooperation teacher-training agreement with the Local Government Education Board of Bandung City (of West Java Province of the Indonesian Education Ministry). GenEd is well positioned with the Bandung local office of the education ministry to effectively roll-out teacher training programs in the province.

• Predominantly, the GenEd team are ethnically Sundanese which is representative of Bandung. More so, our CEO and CBO are mothers with young children, and are passionate and eager to ensure equitable access to quality education in the province (and further across Indonesia).

• Professionally, GenEd's CEO has more than 13 years experience in the corporate sector with well-established connections across industries, which allows the company to seamlessly tap into the CSR market in Indonesia. Additionally, GenEd's CBO, with more than 10 years experience building various education technologies, offer meaningful insights into influencing adoption by school systems. 

• Further, GenEd's hired academic team holds degrees in Education and comprises of well-grounded teachers from the Bandung area who speaks the local languages, understand daily challenges and share the sentiments of educators on the ground. 

• GenEd's routine surveys, polls and focus group discussions with teacher participants at various stages of the program since 2022 has helped the company to update new digital features, streamline processes, add new contents/elements of the training to continue to serve the teachers better. 

• With a deep-rooted and personal connection to Bandung, the GenEd team share an understanding of the city's limitations and creative potential, which fuels our collective motivation to ensure the program's success and longevity.  

• Once ready to scale, the team will continue to expand to include various ethnicities with as close proximities to the target beneficiaries as possible. As an Indonesian-based social enterprise, the GenEd team are built on individuals with passionate motivation to solve Indonesia's education problem. 

Winning the Solve challenge would undoubtedly catapult GenEd's mission for the following reasons:

• Social entrepreneurship is still a novel concept in Indonesia. We are eager to gain guidance, inspiration and motivation from impressive fellow impact makers of the SOLVE community. Accessing Solve's powerful network of like-minded leaders across industries and sectors would be extremely valuable to GenEd's growth. 

• GenEd is seeking technical and technological expertise to help refine its product and maximize outreach/social impact at scale. Obtaining relevant resources such as software licenses and legal services from Solve supporters would catalyze GenEd's growth and outreach immensely. 

• The support from MIT network to establish a comprehensive impact measurement practice would be invaluable to determine the necessary evidence to validate our impact on the ground. 

• GenEd strongly believes in the urgency of its solution. In its mission to deliver innovative teacher training, GenEd believes that Indonesia can no longer afford to overlook teachers' roles. Winning MIT Solve would provide us much credible media exposure to urgently place teachers at the center of the solution to Indonesia's education crisis. 

• We are eager to receive access to world class leadership coaching and strategic advice from the Solve and MIT Network, allowing us to strengthen GenEd's position in the EdTech market. 

• We believe the MIT Solve community has the expertise to help GenEd develop a sustainable and scalable business model that would allow us to significantly improve learning outcomes and development of fundamental skills of Indonesia's future generation.

GenEd believes our Innovation Curriculum is innovative for the following reasons:

1. Existing solutions for low literacy rates in the Indonesian market predominantly focuses on children's ability to read and access books, while GenEd focuses on the teacher's skills to develop children's ability to interact with information meaningfully. 

2. Indonesian youth entrepreneurial spirit and motivation is high but lack human-centric solution and strategy. By applying Design Thinking in schools, it builds student’s innovative mindset to execute entrepreneurial ventures more effectively. The GenEd program is innovative, because it helps the teachers immediately translate the students’ ideas into tangible civic action for their communities in the span of just 10-weeks. 

3. Comparative to alternative teacher training on entrepreneurship, GenEd uniquely addresses UNSDG and civic impact in local communities. Clearly, GenEd places social impact at the center of the teacher training programs.

4. The Education Commission 2019 studies show that school leaders and teachers in Indonesia have limited access to professional development with approximately 16 hours of support annually. GenEd pioneers a change in the Education and EdTech market to focus on teachers who are severely underserved in Indonesia, whereby most of existing products directly target learners instead. 

5. GenEd reimagines the corporate involvement from historically more infrastructure-based assistance (building schools/facilities) to more authentic networking & intangible knowledge sharing (between the employees as industry experts with educators). 

GenEd’s program innovatively bridges education & business: where businesses can meaningfully contribute to developing fundamental competencies of Indonesia’s future workforce, and educators gain real industry insight and context for student learning.

6. GenEd’s philosophy towards innovation would catalyze a generational mindset shift towards civic action across Indonesia.

Overall, GenEd’s solution is innovative as we provide value-add to existing curriculums and assist schools to produce innovators. 

GenEd offers a unique and high-impact program with massive scalable potential across the region; urgently upskilling teachers as fast as possible to equip students with information literacy and design thinking skills to solve our world’s most pressing challenges.

For the next five years we hope to have:

• Secured a network of 15-20 CSR industry partners who share passion to reimagine the Indonesian education landscape, entered into additional long-term teacher-training agreements with 4-10 more local government education boards, expanded our programs into 10+ cities at various provinces, and helped innovate learning environments at 500+ government schools (target 1000+ teachers and 30,000+ students). 

• Strengthened our Operational, Technology and Academics team to continuously refine and optimize GenEd's programs, business processes and online platform (automatization of relevant applicable areas/aspects of the business) to create maximum impact.

• Collaborated with credible renowned independent research institute to publish an objective evaluation of the effectiveness of GenEd's training programs i.e. in improving skills of teachers in teaching literacy and design thinking, as well as achieve student targeted 21st century competencies. Findings can be further formulated into Policy Recommendations for the Indonesian Education Ministry as national implementation across Indonesia and drive meaningful change in education. 

The main impact parameters of our programs are:

1. Outreach & Retention

The number of schools, teachers, and students indicate the outreach of the programs. 

2. Pre-Post/Test

Simple comprehension tests and results for students of teacher participants before and after implementation of activities measure learning gains in information literacy and design thinking.

3. Confidence & Mindset

Self-assessment surveys embedded into the learning programs (pre-course, during, post-course), measure teachers' confidence to apply Guided Reading strategies and Design Thinking principles as part of their classroom exercises.

4. Continuity of student project deliverables

Project management status of select school projects annually to scale and implement directly into community indicate progress of civic action.

5. Adoption of learning

Follow-up calls and e-mail surveys 15, 30, 60, and 90 days upon completion of the learning activity can identify level of civic action mindset shift and transformation as innovator.

6. Student Outcome 

Measuring differences in student performance, participation, and engagement before new teaching strategy implementation and periodically after execution.

7. School transformation

School self-reported increase in student-led extracurricular activities, improved teacher-led initiatives/projects, and increased positive feedback from parents on school improvements, indicate creation of innovative learning environments in school.

Please see our theory of change for GenEd's innovation program here.

GenEd's Innovation program relies on the following interpretations of technology: 1) the application of science and evidence-based knowledge to the practical achievement of information literacy and design thinking; and 2) supplementary modern technology.

1. Science and Evidence based knowledge

GenEd's innovation curriculum is based on Literacy and Innovation targets of the OECD PISA Framework, grounded on proven Guided Reading techniques and strategies for classroom application, as well as evidence-based Design Thinking Principles for innovation. 

2. Supplementary modern technology:

Accelerated adoption for post-pandemic era, GenEd's programs are then further operated through multi modal technology such as:

Communication softwares such as Zoom and Whatsapp to communicate as a community, schedule and execute online workshops and trainings.

• Google drive to access and upload deliverables/classroom activities, digital libraries and sharing learning tools.

• Google form for general registration, collect pre-post tests, surveys and polls.

• GenEd Web-apps for teachers to access structured learning pathways/modules (videos, podcast, learning tools, quiz/assessments). Accessible at https://gened.info

• Youtube to easily access digital libraries and event streams.

A. Inclusion and Diversity in GenEd's Mission/Work

GenEd believes that every child has the right to access high quality education. Critical thinking and literacy skills, attainable through quality education is fundamental to ensure children’s rights to make accurate informed decisions, embrace tolerance, and grasp better economic opportunities.

Hence, GenEd’s is committed to enhancing the quality education across Indonesia through professional development and educator empowerment programs accessible for all teachers and school leaders with diverse racial, ethnic, religious, gender, economic and political backgrounds. Our inclusive approach to teacher and school leadership education are embedded throughout our offerings. 

GenEd believes that quality education delivered by skilled, innovative teachers and school leadership should no longer be unattainable for low income families. Equitable quality education means that even the most disadvantages schools with low-income students, employs and trains for quality teachers and school leaders.

B. Inclusion and Diversity in GenEd's team

• GenEd's predominantly Indonesian team come from various ethnicities but share West Javanese and Sundanese roots, allowing us to have a sense of connection to our target beneficiaries in Bandung yet offer diverse cultural perspectives.

• The team comprises of millennials and Gen Z which guarantee differing perspectives and approach to reimagining the future of education. 

• Academically and professionally, everyone has different expertise and backgrounds which allow for a dynamic and interdisciplinary team. Our team has expertise ranging in law, marketing, education, mathematics, technology, and finance.

• Our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Business Officers are leaders as well as working mothers, and our Chief Financial Officer is hearing impaired.

• Our team works remotely from various geographical locations in Indonesia and cater to flexible working hours. 

Overall, GenEd strives to creating environments in which all members of a group are welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.

GenEd works on a B2B2C Business model whereby we partner with Corporate CSR programs as their respective trusted CSR Partners to provide high impact teacher training to underserved schools in Indonesia. 

We provide teacher training services through online/offline workshops on information literacy and design thinking, with additional access to GenEd's platform's learning modules, digital library of best teaching practices, and networking opportunities. 

Pursuant to Indonesian regulations, companies who are operating in the natural resources Industry must allocate a certain percentage of their respective profit before taxes for CSR initiatives. Furthermore, companies are increasingly becoming more conscious of social impact. 

GenEd is uniquely positioned to fill the current gap of Company CSR Programs in Education sector which focuses on teachers and can achieve positive funds-to-impact ratio. 

In this regard, GenEd aims to help companies achieve higher and more meaningful impact through quality teacher training programs with generational scalability.

Please see our social impact canvas here.

GenEd is an Integrated social enterprise whereby our main business of expanding CSR partnerships act as a primary funding mechanism to deliver high quality teacher training programs to schools in connected communities; GenEd's CSR partnership business and teacher training social programs overlap. In our operations, GenEd can leverage partnerships' office space, employee assistance, industry/technical expertise and network in providing meaningful teacher training to various select schools.

Aside from raising investment capital, GenEd aims to bring in revenue to fund our social impact through entering into CSR Partnership funding contracts, in which the respective program implementations are further facilitated through long-term governments collaboration/contracts in targeted cities/provinces.

Please see further details here. 

Overall, GenEd has achieved various milestones to ensuring its operational and impact sustainability, such as:

1. Secured monetary grants amounting to USD 25,000 from "WorldClass Education Challenge" on Uplink (World Economic Forum) to support our platform development (https://gened.info)

2. Secured angel-investment to support our pilot projects for 2021-2023 academic years amounting to USD 25,000

3. Entered into long-term collaboration partnership agreement with the Local Government Education Board in the City of Bandung (of the Indonesian Education Ministry) to allow access to all underserved government-owned schools from primary, secondary and high school level (total 350 schools) in the West Java province.

4. Secured long-term corporate CSR Partnerships with Deloitte Indonesia(of Deloitte Touche Tomatsu) on various educator empowerment initiatives (project ongoing)

5. Received awards such as "Top 26 Best Women Founded Startups 2023" by InDrive's Aurora Tech Award, "Top 24 women-led technology startups 2021" by UNDP x SheDisrupts, "Top 50 Indonesian Women-led businesses 2021" by Future Female Business School

Overall, we believe that GenEd's business has immense potential for success in Indonesia.