BabyPupa Early childhood Development Podcast Learning APP

Parents and caregivers in low income and vulnerable settings have low level of education and lack awareness on the importance of early years affection and stimulation. More importantly, they lack reading skills and habit of reading to search for information on the web.   

“In site” learning programs are successful but cost intensive to scale and difficult to reach rural areas. Also the time available to learn is very limited to working parents and caregivers. They are often multitasking, watching the kids while performing other errants and is usual to spend long hours commuting. 

We propose an APP with a PODCAST learning program, featuring Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and Gamification  and gathering all scientific findings that will be  communicated in a easy to understand and culturally relevant way. The same app can be used worldwide. 

In G20 recent meeting leaders expressed their concern that 43% (250 million) of boys and girls under five years of age in low and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their full developmental potential due to poverty and malnutrition. These children are under the care of adults not aware of the importance of health, affection, and stimulation during the first years of life. 

Proper care affects long term mental health, social, emotional abilities and cognitive skills, therefore, building human capital.

Lately science and advances in technology aligned, leveraging the knowledge on brain development. However, the population in low income and vulnerable settings are not accessing this information due to lack of awareness and opportunities. A vast amount of information is available on the web but most of them lack reading skills, habit and time to read. 
 
The current “in site” learning programs are cost intensive to scale and challenging to reach rural areas. After assessing the families before, after the leaning programs and during the home visits we understood the time available to learn is very limited to mothers, fathers, and caregivers, and that most of the time they are multitasking while not spending long hours commuting.

The majority of the children from zero to 4 in Brazil is still unattended by nurseries or daycares. These children stay with mothers and caregivers (most of the times neighbors) in informal settings with restricted space, resources no proper stimulation and sometimes not even affection bonding.  These children face the threat of toxic stress due to violence, negligence, poverty, and malnutrition.  The importance of early childhood experiences and care is an unknown information. 
Parents, caregivers, and Educators in low-income settings need to access innovative ways of learning about child development.  They come from a low level of education and have no interest in traditional methods of education, have low reading skills and sometimes no interest and time at all to dedicate to reading. We are serving also the government social workers engaged in family assistance as well educators and nursery assistants in formal settings. The most poor and vulnerable families will benefit from ongoing education through podcasts. 

Decades of neuroscience and behavioral research help illustrate why child development is a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society. 

BabyPupa proposes an innovative approach to capture a “challenging audience” which is one of the parents, caregivers, and educators in low-income settings. It is also pioneering the use of machine learning, artificial intelligence and gamification to immediately respond and help parents in vulnerable settings to sort out difficulties and challenges. 
Our solution builds upon creating one technological broadcast to provide parents, caregivers and educator access to meaningful information that is scientific, evidence-based, culturally relevant and easy to understand by inviting tough leaders to reach vulnerable families in an easy to understand way. The podcasts will focus on 5 key areas: cognition, health, language, play, and emotional development. The optimal experience will be leveraged by gamification, contextual information, chatbot, and artificial intelligence. The APP will add to the current “in site” learning programs and home visit programs as a channel of communication with the families presenting intuitive, intelligent, contextual and accessible content. The App will have a chatbot as a smart engine to understand questions and suggest the path to learn through the podcasts. Gamification aligned with a reward program will help to continue the learning journey and retain interest during the developmental phases of the children. 
Families assessment will help to categorize child and families needs. This will produce an intelligent activity plan through a smart matching making between child’s need and an activity road-map. The family will go thru motivational badges and milestones and an intelligent chatbot will guide users with answers, tips, and recommendations. 
The app will be part of the government home visit program called  “Crianca Feliz” as a learning platform to explore subjects that are not discussed due to restricted visiting time by the social workers. During these visits, the social worker will help the family to enroll and use the App. The reports with the family assessment and behavior at the APP will be reported back to the government in order to provide statistics and evidence on their needs thus better directing the use of public investment. As the approach to early childhood development is universal, both technology and podcasts can be used everywhere in the globe provided that language and some cultural aspects are adapted. Podcasts are fast to produce, share and a low-cost approach to scaling knowledge and best practices around the world. 

The main innovation comes from the assessment of 7 years experience that it is not worthy to invest in transmitting knowledge as everybody is currently doing: by Apps with videos and text. Videos consume band and poor people still have a restricted amount of band, and text is not read by people with a low level of education. Their time is limited and mainly the moms are multitasking, sharing their time with parenting activities and household affairs. 
On the content aspect and in our researches in all Americas we could not find another initiative offering a complete learning program in Early Childhood in podcasts.  Furthermore, there is no single platform that can give voice to all papers and articles that are being published.  Beyond to just being an enabler of these voices, we need to speak and translate this knowledge in a way that simple and uneducated people can understand and relate. A podcast can be produced at a much lower cost, faster and easy to translate to other languages. It is easy to share and therefore spread as well can be accessed during commuting hours. 
On the technology side, the innovation is to propose artificial Intelligence applied in early childhood in order to react and prompt attend the demands and doubts of parents and educators, assess the impact and build upon the needs of an individual or family. 

The technology is new.  We want to build an APP that can use Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Gamification to empower the users with scientific findings necessary to the full development of their children. 
The business model was built based in the demand of the Brazilian public sector, more specifically the county of Sao Paulo to engage the population currently being attended by the program "CRIANCA FELIZ" in a life long learning program. With this partnership where the government can use the app giving free access to the most vulnerable families,  we get the enrollment of thousands of families thus calling the attention of the sponsorship from corporations.   The sustainability of the business model will come from upper class paying a subscription and from corporate sponsorship on the podcast development.  As we can rapidly reach a significant number of people due to the immediate partnership with the government we can use big data to generate income to sustain the recurrent costs and expenses of the APP.

During the assessment of our "in-site"learning groups in Espirito Santo, almost all participants, when asked if after the conclusion of the learning program were going to dedicate more time to activities (language, playing, etc) with children, responded negatively saying they had a very restricted time to do the developmental activities.  It was clear, by the knowledge acquired and the engagement that we could affect positively the quality of the time, their knowledge, their choices,  but not the quantity of the time spent with the activities.   

The podcasts are addressing this "lack of time" to learn and the technology with artificial intelligence will facilitate to understand the needs of the family, their profile and therefore better assist the government in decision taking on what and where to invest to help families to succeed.  There's a latent need for an enabling platform that can address the needs of services and products that can leverage the goals of building human capital. An APP that can both help parents and simultaneously help the government in their decision making can change the game and do it in a much shorter time frame.

We have reached 15 thousand people during the last 6 years.  Pupa is just starting a new program with Sao Paulo County attending 2.700 people in the next 2 years and Boa Vista - Roraima will require the program for another 400 educators. But this the current model of "on-site" learning programs.

As we add the APP to our programs we plan to develop the app and pilot with the County of Sao Paulo for a group of 300 families in the first year (2020) and after the results of the pilot scale up to the families enrolled in the program reaching at least another 20 thousand families.  With the first results of Sao Paulo, the app will be presented to the government for partnerships at a federal level thus upscaling to almost 800 thousand families within the next 5 years. 
As Pupa is part of the IADB - Inter American Development Bank portfolio, we count on our partnership to help to network and finance the translation to Spanish and reach all Latin America through the engagement of similar organizations. 

Our goal goes beyond of serving Brazil but open-sources the solution for the use of all other countries in need. It foresees the engagement of a wide range of scientists and influencers and transforms the platform in one single unified place to share experiences, knowledge, and resources to families all over the world. Approaching early childhood and human capital formation is a common ground for all societies and bring us together in a joint dream of a planet with more sustainability, care, and peace.  Early childhood preparation of the human being is universal and therefore should be approached in a universal and unified way.

The success of the program will depend on building a technology that is cheap, scalable and most of all friendly and desired by the users. It’s aiming to help the population to understand not only the aspects of early childhood development but to be informed about public services and goods that are designed to help them to succeed as parents and educators. The first barrier is a cultural barrier regarding the interest of the target public to learn and to use AUDIOS to learn.  In order to achieve this cultural transformation, we need the help of the government and enrolled public social workers to use, advertise and to teach families on how to use the technology in the current sponsored early childhood education programs. 
Another barrier is the funding capital necessary to build the technology and the podcasts due to its novelty. The venture funding will be attracted only after the prototype proves the business model. 
A barrier of the mixed model of non-profit social delivery in a “for-profit” business is another challenge in certain countries.  There are still misunderstandings and misconception about mixed models that are working with social goods and services but in a for-profit business model.  These types of companies are not benefiting from tax exemptions and in most cases, the government partnerships are done exclusively with non-profit enterprises. As the business model foresees the use of big data as a source of revenue, an enabling legal framework must be established allowing this possibility. 

As we build the prototype we will create pilot groups within the community with different users group in order to research and test different approaches, language, and resources, and to see the ones they like the most and craft the solution from these findings.  We will also research the topics they are most interested and the ones they miss more information and craft the program from these findings.
Partnership with Mobile companies will be established in order to allow the download and streaming without costing/using from their already contracted broadband.  
As we can access seed money from philanthropy to develop the prototype and final technology we can commit in a PPP - Public Private Partnership with the government to be the sole provider of this technology, therefore, allowing the users to have free access to the program. As we grow with the volume we can use big data to generate revenue and also sell sponsorship quotas to private companies to fund the podcasts. We have the interest of BIDLAB - IADB LAB venture fund,  to partner in case we can prove the business model and "Brazil Lab"- an NGO created to leverage startups that are working to improve goods and services necessary to the public sector -  is interested in helping us to connect with the government. 
To overcome the barrier of partnership interface with the government, in case of financial resources directed to Non-profit institutions we will partner with local NGO’s in a model of a social franchise of technology.

Our team is composed by: 
Full time:

(1) A General Project Manager and Team Leader

(1) A Community Specialist and Leader

(1) A Journalist

(1) Pedagogic Director

Part Time and contractors:

(1)  Health Specialist and Program Director

(1)  IT Director

(1) Product Designer

(2) Web and IT Developers 

(1) Video/Audio Producer and Artistic Director

3 award-winning and highly motivated persons with different and necessary skills came together to ensure the success of the idea.  To execute this idea is necessary knowledge and experience in Early childhood and Social Entrepreneurship, IT and Web Development and Health, mainly mental Health. 
Mary Anne de Amorim Ribeiro, a CHANGEMAKER and winner of Re-Imagine Learning 2015 challenge and a social entrepreneur that pioneered the first Early Childhood methodology created for parents and caregivers in low-income communities in Brazil. PUPA was financed by IADB is a member of BCtA of UNDP and have been piloting, developing and perfecting learning programs directed to people with a low level of education for the last 7 years.  Ajanta Adhikari founder and CEO at IONATE - a startup that combines server less and supercomputing to enable a higher IT utilization of infrastructure, is a member of MIT startup exchanger and awarded the Danny Lewin. Adam Ian Kaplin, Ph.D. in Neuropsychiatry is the Principal Psychiatric Consultant at Johns Hopkins MS Center and a pioneer in E-health with Mood247. More recently Dr. Kaplin has also been involved in helping to develop and apply technological innovations to improve patient care and clinical research and is a board member of   E-health of Johns Hopkins.  

Pupa is partnering with IADB - Inter American Development Bank and its main lender and intends to evolve working in partnership with BIDLAB as venture investors. It is also part of  UNDP - BCtA and intends to work closely in impact study models. It is an ASHOKA Changemaker and intends to develop international alliances and partnerships to scale the use of the technology in other countries and partners with Instituto Zero a Seis - a non-profit organization that pioneered the awareness of Early childhood Development 14 years ago in Brazil.  Instituto Zero a Seis will be interface with government and the agreements needs to be done by a nonprofit organization.  

The value proposition is to deliver an early childhood Education program in podcasts in an APP with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and gamification. 
We will primarily serve families and caregivers in low-income settings. We will provide the government with reports of the assessment of the use and assimilation from the learning activities. By partnering with doctors and scientists we will serve them as enablers of broadcasting their findings. School and maternities will benefit as they can engage their public in leveraging the information necessary to better perform their activities. Human Resources from Companies can offer the app to the employees as a benefit for working parents. Eventually, upper-class parents can enroll and provide for themselves and the nannies a better understanding of practices. Revenue streams will come from big data, corporate sponsorships, and upper-class subscription. 

We need seed money finance for the technological app, podcast development, team expenses during prototype and final version conclusion and marketing testing phase. After a positive conclusion of the technology and contents, we will establish PPP's (Public Private Partnership) and enroll the families.  With both technology and contracts with the government, we will call for venture investors and shareholders private investment. With revenue coming from the business (big data, sponsorships and paying a subscription) thus post venture phase,  we plan to upscale with private equity investment money. 

SOLVE and Solve partners can help in finding seed money finance for the technological app, podcast development, team expenses during prototype and final version conclusion and marketing testing phase. It brings a strong credibility to engage scientist and philanthropists.  After a positive conclusion of the technology and contents, we will establish PPP's (Public Private Partnership) and enroll the families.  Solve partners can help with designing and refining the business model as well with technology. eventually with both technology and contracts with the government, we will call for venture investors and shareholders private investment. With revenue coming from the business (big data, sponsorships and paying a subscription) thus post venture phase, we plan to upscale with private equity investment money. 

Pupa is partnering with IADB - Inter American Development Bank and its main lender and intends to evolve working in partnership with BIDLAB as venture investors. It is also part of  UNDP - BCtA and intends to work closely in impact study models. It is an ASHOKA Changemaker and intends to develop international alliances and partnerships to scale the use of the technology in other countries and partners with Instituto Zero a Seis - a non-profit organization that pioneered the awareness of Early childhood Development 14 years ago in Brazil.  Instituto Zero a Seis will be interface with government and the agreements needs to be done by a nonprofit organization.  

Artificial Intelligence can catalyze on availability of information and respond rapidly to critical needs of parents and caregivers. From "what to do" in a home accident to "what home resources can I use to boost executive functions?" are some examples of infinite possibilities towards combining leveraged knowledge and practical advice. As the podcast will be crafted by specialists and based on scientific evidence will help parents to sort out developmental milestones and possible learning disabilities much faster and hopefully in time for effective intervention. If the child falls into rare diseases or learning disabilities it will be possible to better understand and coop with the circumstances optimizing the possibilities of a better outcome before is too late. As parents are digging a specific them Artificial Intelligence can offer a learning path compatible with children age, developmental stages and family profile. As the child grows and as the family faces new challenges such as new member, city or school change, member disease, the APP can help to offer content relevant to deal with that specific situation. 

PUPA would like to invest the award by creating a specific education program to assist young and teenager moms that lives in poverty and vulnerability to thrive and break through the poverty cycle. Besides the in-depth early childhood education program,   the work will include a mentoring program to improve their mental health,  self-esteem and working skills.  It will go beyond the podcasts and include on-site, one-by-one sponsorship by a working/successful mom that will "adopt and care" that young mom during a 1-year program. This program will be conducted together with the City Hall of Sao Paulo, Human Rights department to serve as "case" and inspire others to come. By the conclusion of the program and impact assessment, PUPA will consult for other city halls and nonprofit organizations to replicate the experience.