Zee Kwat Academy

Mission: To offer continuous access to experiential and interactive learning with our carefully-tailored curriculum and courses by utilizing creative learning styles to help unlock children’s potential and provide better learning experiences.

Vision: To advance social change in Myanmar by providing accessible and affordable quality education which can equip Myanmar learners with the competencies necessary to reach one’s full potential.

Core Values: Sustainability, Social change, Quality, Access

As an Executive Director, the team lead is involved in strategic planning and development, along with the senior management team and core team. Moreover, she is responsible for ensuring the organization's activities to be in line with the mission, vision of the organization. With the core values being kept in mind, she has to lead the team with diverse teammates to move forward the shared goal. In addition, she is included in the process of program design development and the successful implementation of the programs.  The quality assurance and accountability to the respective stakeholders are crucial so that she has to facilitate the development of organizational strategic directions and strengthening of resources, including but not limited to, financial, personnel, academics, etc. Overall, she is responsible for the organization’s sustainability and success, while handling the key aspects of the governance, strategic development, stakeholder engagement and financial management. 

As discussed within our organization, at least 3 team members would actively participate in the 12-week LEAP Project Sprint. Upon request and necessity, other 2-3 team members will also stay standby for giving support. We solely believe that this LEAP challenge could help strengthen the quality of our education programs and could be a game changer for our organization. Thus, we have set clear prioritization for this LEAP project within our organization due to its potential impact. The team lead and supporting team members have also discussed the clarification of their roles and responsibilities for the LEAP project. They also have guaranteed their commitment for the involvement in the program while handling other affairs of the organization. Upon that, we have prepared resource development and allocation, especially Human Resources, to support the program as necessary. Additional support team members, who are not directly connected with the challenge, will communicate with the LEAP project team members to share their knowledge and experiences that could contribute towards the evidence-based research of the LEAP project. New volunteers have recently been recruited so that they could help the other priorities within the organization continue smoothly. Effective communication and collaboration will be encouraged for the best practice of time management. Continuous feedback and check-in sessions will also be provided so that they can stay motivated with the strong will and commitment to the LEAP project. We believe that these keystones would help our team members stay dedicated to the LEAP project and effectively involve in the 12-week project sprint. We clearly understand that there is a need for the balance between the participation in the project sprint and overall governance of the organization. Hence, our team members will be well-prepared to actively support the project sprint since this MIT LEAP Challenge is also crucial for our sustainable organizational development.

From individual well-being to a well-being society

The current paradigm represented in Myanmar is one born from lack of efficient leadership at both regional and national levels, failing to get resilient and rebuilt from past tragedies. Institutionally, toxic pedagogy, that stands as barriers and obstacles of social cohesion and inclusive community, continue to be taught at all levels of the education system. Even within families which can be considered as the first and foremost socializing agents of young children, elders do not understand the importance of social emotional well-being ever since childhood and adolescent development. This issue has gradually become an inter-generational problem and is in need of effective solutions both at community and national level.

These structural problems are more hostile towards the young women and LGBTQ community. In order to foster more unity, solidarity, and social integration within our communities, it is vital to instill the essence of community spirit from individual to society level through social emotional learning. Nonetheless, SEL education was never integrated in the school curriculum as a mandatory component. As a result, we are witnessing the lack of social cohesion, disrespect and intolerance of racial, gender, religious, and ideological diversity, and various types of discrimination based on identity in our country. 

To tackle this societal challenge, a learning and teaching mechanism with components of critical thinking, societal awareness, and community empowerment, and most importantly, social emotional learning, should be installed in schools so that students who shall be a part of the human resources to form an inclusive and cohesive society, will be able to voice for social cohesion and community participation as well as lead to the personal development of all individuals. We firmly believe the path towards progress must occur through a paradigm shift, targeted at educating the next generation of youth and expanding their networks with professionals. The development of these future leaders hinges on instilling values such as inclusion, collaboration and reconciliation as well as equipping them with professional skills and a community-building mindset.

By empowering and nurturing youths with skills and values along with creating communities by youths for youths, the next generation of youth community leaders can create inclusive communities to combat the existing status quo of divisive societies and create a new narrative of youths. Zee Kwat Academy therefore aims to provide SEL (social emotional learning) education to young learners across the country, as an effective educational  solution. It will also place an emphasis on learning variability for children of different age groups, socio-economic backgrounds, in order to encourage inclusive and equitable access to learning opportunities. Our solution is currently in the pilot stage, focusing children starting from 10 years of age. We have different programs for certain age groups with a 2-years age gap. For instance, we have SEL courses for ages 10-12, ages 13-15 and ages 16-18, etc.

I think that our approach to demonstrating the effectiveness of our solution and education programs leans towards the formative research of conducting feasibility studies, user interviews, implementation studies, pre-assessment, post-assessment and so on. Due to our context and limited resources, below methods were only used for the monitoring and evaluation of our education solution. 

• Data collection and analysis: We have collected quantitative data on students’ enrollment of each class and the completion rate to gather relevant statistics for measuring program outputs and outcomes. Feedbacks and surveys were also collected from the respective stakeholders: including but not limited to: students, educators, teachers, non-teaching staff, even external mentors/ consultants and partner organizations.

• Monitoring and classroom observation: studying the responses of students throughout their learning journey is also a key aspect of our M&E processes. By incorporating classroom observations and regular reviews of the teaching and learning experiences, we can identify the areas for improvement so that we can prepare and revise for any gap or challenges that we have encountered.

• Evaluation and assessment: Formal assessment on learners’ journey is also carried out to measure the impacts of our programs. Focus group discussions and user interviews containing students, parents and educators were often conducted as a part of qualitative research. By doing so, evaluation on our programs or solutions is carried out by identifying trends, patterns and indicators of outcomes. 

• Continuous learning and improvement: teachers’ training and occasional discussion forums were provided for continuous learning and professional development of educators. We also study similar case studies in local and global contexts to learn about other organizations’ challenges and suggestions. Conducting informal comparative studies helps us to understand the current status of our solution, a comparison of outcomes and best practices for future programs. 

• Stakeholders engagement: We have also partnered with other organizations to implement our solution in real-world settings or receive training and additional support for our solution. We often seek mentorship or suggestions from the professional experts for the review of our solution. This also helps us see the effectiveness of the solution from another perspective and sometimes receive support from them for the further development.

With the commitment of evidence-based effectiveness of our education solutions, our organization, Zee Kwat Academy, would like to deliver quality education with demonstrated long-term social impacts. With the help of LEAP Project, we believe that we would be able to develop a comprehensive evidence-based framework for measuring the programs’ effectiveness and the organization’s impact.

We have launched pilot programs of our solution in certain variability settings in different contexts for age 10-12 students. Our solution primarily addresses the within-person variability, however, depending on the situation and context, we try to adjust our implementation mechanism with within-group variability or contextual variability accordingly. Firstly, there have been two delivery methods of our pilot programs: virtual and in-person. 

Virtual classes have more diverse students from across Myanmar with different socio economic backgrounds. Thus, within-group variability was often observed during the virtual classes and our educators had to adjust according to the student’s needs and situation.

3 types of guardians-students relationship has been observed throughout our virtual implementation process of our solution: (i) a case where both guardian and student have interest and commitment to do the best in class, (ii) a case where only the guardian is enthusiastic on the subject matter while the student does not seem to be so, and (iii) the case where both guardian and student have low motivation and only join the class just because it is free of charge and the student has free time. As a result of it, we can see that active students with supportive guardians definitely show big growth in their competencies where we evaluate through projects and presentations in class.  Students with low interest and motivation sometimes drop out in the middle of the class or just complete the class with no visible improvement as a result.

In-person classes have different case scenarios and include different groups of students, where most of them are internally displaced people. Thus, there is not much within-person or within-group variability in that context. However, there is contextual variability between online and offline learning sessions. In order to accommodate the differences and promote equity, we have to be flexible about our solution and revise according to the local needs and situation. 

All of the pilot programs received great feedback and satisfaction from both students and parents. It has revealed that our solution helps children understand their own emotions and of their friends through focus group discussions and user interviews. Most of the students enjoy the learning experience and actively keep up the learning journey with us. Our solution and its academic quality of implementation also receive praise from our partners so that even our program participants and relevant stakeholders request us to expand our solution and continue our extended programs with us. This kind of feedback and insights inform us about the pros and cons of our solution and the flexibility of implementing it. Since we believe that our solution could contribute to the long-term impacts and receive praise from our stakeholders, it keeps us motivated to move forward with our work. With the help of the LEAP project, we are confident that our solution can be greatly improved and promoted towards different groups of people and within greater contextual variability. 

As Zee Kwat Academy, we hope to strengthen this evidence-based research to further improve our educational activities in terms of inclusivity, accessibility, adaptability and affordability. As a social enterprise in the developing stage, we are in need of more structured organizational development in order to foster our initiatives on ground. The design and crux of our educational projects still require more refinements by revisiting the strengths and rooms of improvement reflected in previous monitoring and evaluation activities. In spite of the progress we have made in implementing educational projects on-ground, we have not progressed much far in research and development, which implies that we need to gather more factual evidence to catalyze our actions and analyze the conditions. More so, our organization is composed of motivated, dedicated, and passionate young professionals, nonetheless, sometimes it requires mentorship, advisory and consultancy from mid and senior-level professionals. We hence consider that engaging with LEAP can fulfill the gaps that exist within our organization. Participating in the LEAP project shall encourage experiential learning not only with beneficiaries of our projects but also as an organization ourselves, and foster more innovation and impact in our works.

- What are recommended methods of delivery of social emotional learning for young learners with different learning variabilities?

- How should we measure the effectiveness and learning progress of young learners around SEL education?

- How should the instructional model of social emotional learning be designed to be adaptable and effective with every possible context? 

We believe that formative research can contribute to our organization’s desired outputs of the 12-week LEAP Project sprint, centered on 3 variabilities: within person variability, within group variability, contextual variability. The analytical framework is basically constructed with the research questions mentioned above. At the individual level, we aim to figure out which delivery methods of SEL education are the most effective ways to enhance the knowledge of young learners from different age groups, backgrounds, and levels of knowledge. In addition, we are eager to understand which tools and techniques should be utilized to measure the learning progress of young learners and to what extent they have achieved their respective learning goals.

Regarding within group variability, we would like to identify which methodology is better, 1) either grouping by age, or 2) grouping by intellectual level and level of background knowledge, 3) grouping by grades, or how we should design the SEL curriculum and instructional methods in the most optimal means. Likewise, we aspire to further analyze how we can use our learning model more flexibly to be adapted with any other different context, i.e. contextual variability. These desired outputs can be achieved by conducting learners' experience surveys, interviews, pre and post-learning assessments, focused group discussions as implementation studies, etc.

Utilizing the outputs following the conclusion of the LEAP Project sprint, we plan to apply them in 3 main areas, 1) improvement in the implementation of learning and educational activities, 2) research and development for future activities, 3) organizational development. First, we will thoroughly and carefully study the research outputs and ensure that all team members within our organization understand the strengths and weaknesses we have figured out during the experiential research activities. Next, we will curate our future strategic plan and strategic roadmap of the organization, integrating the findings and recommendations. We will try to reduce the learning challenges of our students in SEL education by analyzing the feedback and elevating more access to learning opportunities. We will also foster more research and development in order to design more pragmatic educational activities that are aligned with the needs on-ground. Furthermore, we will also revisit the structure of our organization to create more impacts and solidified actions. 

We believe that MIT LEAP Challenge 2023 would provide numerous opportunities for the development and growth of not only the solution but also our organization. The following short-term outcomes are expected after 12-week LEAP Project Sprint:

- Networking with relevant local and global professionals for organizational development, including but not limited to, academics, financial and human resources. 

- Effective M&E mechanism on experiential learning of SEL education around young learners

- Support and mentorship for the growth and strengthening of our education solution

- Solid and evidence-based impact measurement of our education solution 

We are also aiming for the below long-term outcomes:

- Long-term educational roadmap of SEL education in Myanmar for different ages, socio economic backgrounds, levels of knowledge and different contexts.

- Quality assurance of our education programs

- Integration of Social Emotional Learning nationwide into local and national curriculum

- partnership and opportunities for sustainable organizational development