AlterYouth

In Bangladesh, 98% children enroll in class 1 yet 19% children drop out to work by class 5, before learning to read and write. 

We have created a Consumer-2-Consumer scholarship platform where individuals can start scholarships directly for financially struggling students in Government Primary Schools throughout Bangladesh and prevent dropouts; as children no longer need to work for an income. 

A scholarship platform can work any where in the world, connecting its able citizens with its financially struggling students in schools across nations and ensure millions of literate adults worldwide.

In Bangladesh, 98% children enroll in schools but 19% children drop out to work by class 5; before learning to read and write. This obstructs approximately 2 million future adults from civic participation and inclusion. 

Primary schools are free, but the opportunity cost of attending school; what children could earn working instead, causes poverty affected students to drop out, only to endure a lifetime of poverty due to illiteracy.

Only if we could prevent these dropouts, at least until completion of primary school, Bangladesh would become a literate nation; where every citizen could access the internet and utilize information technology to grow as far as one aspires to.

More importantly, establishing the first fully literate generation would exterminate illiteracy and consequent poverty from future generations.

Worldwide, around 781 million people are illiterate, which also shows a 6.5 billion literate population who are ready to pass on literacy to the fellow marginalized population. 

We believe the illiteracy and consequent poverty problem is near its end and its time for final extermination.

1) Children in Primary Schools under the criteria: 

i) Single Mother, ii) Orphan and iii) Disabled Parent. Scholarships keep them at school until completion by offering a higher income at school than at work, ensuring literacy in the process. A literate citizen is one who is freed from poverty and can access information technology to reach as far as one aspires to.

2) Rural women. Each scholarship empowers a student's mother with a mobile phone connection and bank account, through which she receives the USD 12/month scholarship, giving them security, independence and access to further opportunities.

3) Schools, whose dropout rates decline and in turn villages, with their fully first literate generations in the making.

4) Users; helping lives directly & transparently through the platform.

Since children drop out of school for an income, or a lack thereof, the logical solution is a higher income opportunity at school. 

AlterYouth is a C2C platform like UBER, where users can start 'Literacy Scholarships' directly for students under the criteria i) Single Mother, ii) Orphan and iii) Disabled Parent, in Government Primary Schools throughout Bangladesh. 

Upon initiation, the mother/grandmother of the student is provided a mobile phone with a bank account. Each scholarship is TK 800/month, transferred directly through mobile banking to the mother of the child, contingent upon 65% attendance and marks in class; preventing the dropout. The user also receives the school report card of the student every academic term. It continues until completion of class 5, ensuring a literate citizen.

In addition, professionally trained counselors call the mothers every month to help solve daily life problems, train and develop them; and calls the children to assess their learning and motivate them for future success. This is currently being done manually to generate data and to be done using AI.

With time, our model will be trained to follow the latent model which dictates the learning process of a student and take all the hidden variables into account.

Analyzing the classwork and report cards of a particular student, our system will also suggest teachers necessary course of action for particular students, further enhancing the learning process. 

There are 2 million such children, as opposed to 15 million able Bangladeshis worldwide. Connecting both would establish the first fully literate generation of Bangladesh.

AlterYouth is a brand new technology enabling a Person-2-Person scholarship platform. 

1- The most similar model is "Sponsor a child." Here, a donation is made to an organization for the benefit of the child, whereas AlterYouth connects you to the child (beneficiary), bank transferring your scholarship directly to the mother and enables you to monitor the scholarship progress directly through the school, simply on your phone. 

2- Inexpensive; $12/month whereas all others are above $30/month, yet very effective as the beneficiary receives it directly in cash in her own mobile bank account.

3- 100% transparent. The user sees the direct bank transaction and can call the student's family or school anytime. School report cards are sent to the user every academic term as well. 

4- Permanently changes lives by ensuring literacy; it is quantifiable impact. Scholarships are contingent upon attendance and marks in class, hence no money is spent without impact in place. 

AlterYouth primarily uses technology in the sense of a digital C2C platform e.g. Uber, and subsequently uses mobile network, mobile financial service and internet connectivity for scholarship amount transfer and scholarship documents transfer.  

Moreover, schools enter the platform using a school application that enables villages to digitize their schools and students scalably without geographical boundary. 

In Bangladesh, 98% children enroll in primary schools but 19% children drop out to work before completion; never learning to read and write. Only if we could prevent these dropouts, at least until completion of primary school, Bangladesh would become a literate nation. 

Primary schools are free, but the opportunity cost of attending school; what children could earn working instead, causes poverty affected students to drop out, only to endure a lifetime of poverty due to illiteracy.

Our solution offers potential dropout students an income in the form of a scholarship, which is 30% higher than what a 6-11 year old can earn working. As such, it acts as a preventive measure to dropping out before achieving literacy.

Once a child achieves literacy, the benefits to oneself and society by unlocking ones potential and including oneself to society. 

Till date, 1,023 scholarships are active and only 17 children have dropped out since then.

Till date 1,023 scholarships:

881 potential dropouts in primary schools being prevented from dropping out to work

881 rural mothers and grandmothers have been provided with mobile phones with their own mobile bank accounts

563 poverty affected families have been ensured a fixed additional monthly income

120 children with absent income earning fathers in their families have completed primary school and ensured literacy

97 Primary Schools and Villages turned dropout free

574 Unique users/civil society members achieved self actualization and sustainable development goals by starting scholarships on AlterYouth and ensuring permanent change in the world which they can visibly see

The goal for next year is to establish the first drop out free district out of the 64 districts in Bangladesh and scale from then onward. 

The goal in the next 5 years is to surpass break even at 4,500 scholarships, redesign business operations for blitz-scaling and create adaptable technology for international expansion and operation.

AlterYouth is a digital platform and requires mobile network, mobile financial service and internet connectivity on both ends of its user segments. An absence of any of the ecosystems in an area will limit the ability of AlterYouth to operate in it. 

Even though Bangladesh has nationwide coverage of the three, in the event of scaling internationally, the absence of the mentioned technologies shall be a barrier to scale in areas/countries as such.

Communicate with local governments to establish/encourage the unavailable technologies such as mobile network, mobile banking, internet and schools.

4 Founders working full time

13 full time employees

23 part time staff

Primarily, the motto of our company is, it is not your fault if ou were born to a poor country, but it is definitely your fault if it is still poor when you die.

All our founders and most employees have same backgrounds, we have all gone abroad for higher studies and came back to the motherland to spark change.

As such, the passion is on an unimaginable level. We have worked for 3-4 years straight without any inward financials.

Moreover, we have computer science engineers, an accountant, marketeers, business grads, operation experts and an MBA as well.

Partnered with the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Government of Bangladesh to scale scholarship operations in all 68,000 schools of Bangladesh.

Initially funded by the ICT Ministry, Government of Bangladesh with an innovation grant at seed stage.

Grameenphone Limited as telecommunication partner, regarding the mobile phone adoption for student guardians, and also as investor.

bKash limited, an investment of Gates Foundation, as payment partner, with regards to disbursement and collection of scholarships.

Google Business Group has recently been to Bangladesh to film and is producing a documentary on AlterYouth.

We have received the "SDGs Startup Award" from UNDP Bangladesh 

We have received "Asia Pacific SDG Enterprise Award" from UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Hub

We have been mentioned as the "Top 100 Social Enterprises to watch for in Asia 2018" by National University of Singapore

Literacy Scholarships (transferred from user to beneficiary):                Tk 800/month

Service Fee  (AlterYouth revenue):                                                        Tk 150/month

User Pays in total:                                                                                  Tk 950/month

The service fee on each scholarship is the revenue stream for AlterYouth. Currently, 70% of it pays for the banking charges, operational costs etc. while the remaining 30% is gross profit. The profit ratio shall increase with scale; to reinvest in the growth of the business in terms of marketing and operations.

AlterYouth has reached its break even point at 800 scholarships recently; as its scholarship service fees outgrew its expenses. At full scale, expenses will go up initially and true break even point will be reached at 3,500 scholarships, after which the scholarship service fees will suffice. 

This prize shall be used to launch in full scale and humbly targets to attain more than 20,000 scholarships in 12 months; becoming profitable and financing its own scaling afterwards, eradicating illiteracy in Bangladesh.

AlterYouth is basically a platform where an individual can start a scholarship for a financially struggling student and ensure his/her access to education. The existence of both the groups are in every country of the world, thus the replication of the model can be done in every country, like UBER, regardless of the economic situation, adapting locally according to education level.

It shall enable nations worldwide to educate their own populations.

The ability to read and write, or literacy, is fundamental to social inclusion and shared prosperity. With inherent literacy, digital literacy is often attained easily through social interactions.

AlterYouth works to connect the diaspora and able citizens of Bangladesh and ultimately every nation through scholarships with their youth population at risk of dropping out from schools and often growing up illiterate, excluded from Information Technology lifelong. For example in Bangladesh, the mission is connecting the 15 Million Diaspora population with the 2 million student population at risk of dropping out before completing primary education and establishing its first fully literate generation.

There will always be poor students regardless whether a country is poor or not, and able citizens of the country who want to support those students with scholarships. Thus, it can be easily practiced as a cross boundary scholarship platform like other platforms e.g. Uber and AirBnB.

Solve can mentor and advise product development and strategic planning for replication internationally.

United Nations, since we directly impact on 4 SDGs, 

1: No Poverty

4: Quality Education

5: Gender Equality

8: Reduced Inequalities

We can work together to encourage the adoption of p2p scholarship and allocate funding to establish the technology for achievement of SDGs.

AlterYouth received the "Asia Pacific SDG Enterprise Award" from the UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Hub in 2018. 

As we have access to a wide range of information regarding a student's preferences, circumstances and results, we can utilize ML models to generate a personalized curriculum which is more suited to that particular student to reduce his weakness in a particular area and the following results will work as the feedback for the system. With time, hopefully our model will be trained to follow the latent model which dictates the learning process of a primary school student and take all the hidden variables into account.

Analyzing the classworks and report cards of a particular student, we can also suggest teachers necessary course of action for a particular student , further enhancing the learning process. 

We will ramp up our technology and marketing with the budget to ensure international expansion so underrepresented communities across nations will have chances of getting out of disadvantaged situations by fellow citizens of their own nations.

AlterYouth's scholarship criteria is:

1) Single Mother,

2) Disabled Father

3) Orphan

Three of the situations have women and girls who are not only under financial pressure in rural areas, but also under extreme social pressure.

When alteryouth provides a mobile phone, mobile bank account and a monthly scholarship income contingent upon her child's attendance in school, it truly liberates a woman from the daily hardships in life.

We will use this prize for ramping up our technology, marketing and operating scale to expand internationally and change lives of single mothers and young girls/students across boundaries.

AlterYouth works to connect the diaspora and able citizens of Bangladesh and ultimately every nation through scholarships with their youth/student population at risk of dropping out from schools and often growing up illiterate, excluded from Information Technology lifelong. For example in Bangladesh, the mission is connecting the 15 Million Diaspora population with the 2 million student population at risk of dropping out before completing primary education and establishing its first fully literate generation.

There will always be poor students regardless whether a country is poor or not, and able citizens of the country who want to support those students with scholarships. Thus, it can be easily practiced as a cross boundary scholarship platform like other platforms e.g. Uber and AirBnB.

We will use this prize for ramping up our technology, marketing and operating scale to expand internationally and spark change in various geography and demography through countries worldwide.