Dream Factory Foundation

Dream Factory Foundation is dedicated to ensuring quality education of children and youth from underserved communities by providing them with the evidence-based tools, knowledge, resources, mentorship and safe spaces they need to improve their learning outcomes, and open up pathways for economic inclusion in adulthood. Our vision is to see these young people live in the reality of their dreams. 

The three pillars that drive our mission are namely; education, leadership and economic empowerment. For education; our target population acquire the knowledge and practical skills to pursue their dreams. In building leadership capacity, they use their inner purpose and values as a guide to achieve their dreams. To achieve economic empowerment, they access meaningful economic opportunities. 

Our signature program for in-school children and youth is called, Adopt A School program, It involves the adoption of a school by multi-stakeholders through a multi-level program whose intervention is aimed at achieving system change in the public education sector. The primary beneficiaries being low performing schools located in rural and low-income urban communities. Using a social-ecological model we provide holistic education and training programs through partnerships. The model is a collaborative effort between civil society, government and corporate to drive school improvement which results in sectoral improvement. The approach is through a diagnostic assessment of each school for learners, teachers, and school governance and operation; with the wellbeing and success of learners at the center of our work and approach. Our systems change model creates multiple points of intervention at community or organizational level towards macro system level impact.

We are committed to serve this demographic of schools because in the year 2021, it was reported the school dropout rate in Southern Africa reached its peak in 20 years. In South Africa for eg, it was estimated that up to 750 000 children of school-going age were out of school by May of that year. Although this was exacerbated by the hard lockdowns effected at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,  the issue of school dropout has been persistent in previous years.

A closer look at the demographic profile of the schools that were affected reveals that the schools in underserved and under-resourced communities bore the most burden of school dropouts. 

Lusanda Magwape is the Founding CEO of the organisation.  As a qualified Attorney, she 

• Leads all legal compliance for the organization including drafting and assessing contracts, legal, tax, accounting and governance compliance for organisational due diligence; statutory reporting and compliance for the respective nations where the organisation currently operates

• Responsible for the conceptualization, strategic leadership and growth of the organization

• Spearheads and manages organisation’s service and product offerings focused on youth, women and children

• Manages staff development and partner relations 

• Also leads as a fundraiser, establishing relations with sponsorships, CSR bodies, individual donors across the SSA region and globally.

• oversees curriculum development, with a special focus on digital skills,  entrepreneurship, personal development and leadership

• Facilitates, trains and moderates the organizations’ programs for SMMEs and organizations

• Mentors 150+ start ups on legal issues with regards to understanding contracts including partnership agreements, business entity registrations and compliance, obtaining permits and licensing, drafting company policies

• Reaching 100,000+ youth in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Cameroon through activities (workshops, short term educational programs, webinars, etc) with a special focus on children, youth and women empowerment

The team lead has over 15+ years experience in successful project management both as the founder and leader of several other initiatives throughout her leadership journey. She has applied her expertise to support the organisation to develop a strategy and implement change, especially working with underserved communities such as children, youth and women serving as an Ambassador for After School for the Western Cape Government. We are a diverse and passionate team of 8 dedicated to the LEAP project as it fits within our strategic goal to pivot in being a technology-driven organization to make impact at scale. Our Programs Directors has a Masters from the University of Cape Town for Social Behavioural Change (Social Sciences). We therefore have two senior level staff committed to the success of this project. The rest of the team carries expertise in data management, digital media, media and communications, administration, finance and a project assistant to offer full support to the senior-level staff. We believe that as a team of 8 we are well positioned to effectively distribute and carry the time capacity needed as well as executive on the tasks required to be able to be a successful project host. We have successfully participated as a team for initiatives such as the Solving Public Problems Accelerator with the Burnes Centre for Social Change as well as the Google.org Women and Girls Accelerator Program; where we are initiating an entrepreneurship and digital skills program for 6000 women and girls in the SADC region.

Change Bot is a gamified edtech chatbot run over whatsapp to upskill underserved children with entrepreneurial development and mindsets

In the year 2021, it was reported the school dropout rate in South Africa reached its peak in 20 years. It was estimated that up to 750 000 children of school-going age were out of school by May of that year - the majority being the senior high school learners. Although this was exacerbated by the hard lockdowns effected at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,  the issue of school dropout has been persistent in previous years.

A closer look at the demographic profile of the schools that were affected reveals that the schools in underserved and under-resourced communities bore the most burden of school dropouts. 

Why the problem matters:

• Education experts explored the strategies that can be employed to protect learners’ constitutionally guaranteed right to education at a panel discussion at the Constitution Hill Human Rights Festival in Johannesburg South Africa. Some of the issues raised were on data collection and appropriate usage - how that  “..in order to create change within the education system, there needs to be a systemic way of monitoring and evaluating that change. Through the collection of data, resources can be used more efficiently and time can be saved on those campaigns that do not suit particular contexts”. 

• Furthermore, there is a period or a process of disengagement that happens before the learner eventually drops out of school. There are factors that push and pull learners away from school. Using simple tools and interventions that keep learners connected and engaged can intervene against it before turns into eventual dropouts (Merle Mansfield, programme director for the Zero Dropout Campaign)

Those who drop out of school essentially set themselves on a negative trajectory of unemployability and failure to resolve this further perpetuates the cycle of poverty and inequality

Identified root causes that we are tackling:

1. Lack of Individual learners’ agency or lack of motivation 

2. Ineffective  use of data - we do not have a good understanding of the impact of after-school programming on school drop-out rates, from the perspective of the beneficiary - the learners themselves, and how the routine data collected on students can be used effectively to improve educational outcomes

3. An imbalance of resource allocation to different schools’ infrastructure. This has left many public schools with poor physical infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, limited teaching aids, leading to relatively poor educational outcomes. 

Over the last 12 years, we have channeled our efforts largely on in-person engagements reaching over 100 000 young people.We now seek to make impact at scale through the use of technology that is cost-effective and is able to gather data of learners effectively. Keeping children at school, providing quality education for all children that will yield to better academic outcomes and ultimately life outcomes and societal change makes this solution a catalyst for change. 

Research shows ICTs are powerful tools to spread knowledge and increase academic outcomes amongst young people. Whilst 92% of learners have access to a mobile phone in South Africa, knowledge and educational content remains inaccessible due to using platforms that require data costs that are too expensive to our target beneficiary whose household income is less than R10 000/month. It is within this context that the Change Chatbot exists. Our solution is a gamified, Edtech chatbot over Whatsapp that educates learners (6-12 years) living in underserved communities with entrepreneurship development and mindsets. 

Why entrepreneurship development content?

In the BRICS July 2023 Ministers of Education Meeting, entrepreneurship development is now 1 of 8 thematic areas for developing education. South Africa is now bound to strengthen entrepreneurship development at all levels of education and training to equip young people for the "changing world of work" and equitable social justice.

Why a gamified Edtech chatbot?

A study by the University of the Western Cape (UWC) used a data free chat solution called "MOYA" to provide free online tutoring. But students still preferred to purchase data to turn to whatsapp to access learning opportunities. This further validates why we have chosen this solution and its benefits which are:

- Reduced acquisition barrier: no additional app required, Whatsapp is a familiar app that users already have WhatsApp installed. This increased user adoption and higher adoption rates

- Shorter learning journey: users know WhatsApp

- Improving equitable social justice through inclusion: access to WhatsApp is achievable to our target beneficiaries via cheap data bundles

- Gamification: enhances engagement because of the human desire to be rewarded, achieve and engage in healthy competition. Users are rewarded for their participation through digital badges, certification and access to exclusive content. Healthy competition is promoted through leaderboards that showcase achievements. By highlighting entrepreneurial habits, gamification also enables us to use social behavioural change to improve children's entrepreneurial mindsets and participation. 

Examples of Challenges (lessons + quizzes): find a need and meet it (business idea generation), digital marketing from your phone, managing my money (financial planning)

- Offers scalability and cost-effectiveness: easy replication in other African countries

Once onboarded, at every step of the customer journey, data is gathered on user actions and responses, allowing for quick feedback for iteration to improve the app. The platform has a built-in customisable Content Management System which can provide real-time feedback and recommendations. 

We have conducted both foundational and formative research to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution. Through desktop research we were able to better understand the problem we are seeking to address as well the effectiveness of the solution with other existing interventions. We also wanted to understand how technology is being used to improve learner outcomes and whether the Whatsapp Business Api has been used as a tool in this respect. For example, it was through desk-top research that we could demonstrate that using a WhatsApp Bot was the most effective solution for our target audience. We learnt of a 2020 study that was conducted by the University of the Western Cape titled: "Towards Student Inclusivity during COVID-19: Testing the #datafree Moya Messenger". This study revealed that even when students were provided with a data free solution that sought to improve their learning outcomes through the provision of free tutoring services; students still preferred to purchase data to access WhatsApp to conduct tutoring. In trying to understand why, one of the most prominent responses was the familiarity of the WhatsApp platform, friends and family were already using and therefore did not want to learn a whole new platform where they could achieve the same outcome using WhatsApp.

In 2023, we received funding that allowed us to build the Edtech platform and launch a pilot in Botswana. We validated the Edtech platform by onboarding 1500 users in a six month period. 69% of these users completed at least 1 of the 4 challenges that we launched. 29% of users joined through referrals. We also received 233 requests from outside of Botswana to use the platform. Since the platform is geo-locked we cannot accept these requests, but it has demonstrated the need for the platform outside of Botswana, which is why we are now making the platform available in South Africa.

We have partnered with the University of Cape Town's Monitoring and Evaluation Masters program to provide third party evaluation of our curriculum. After 18 months of a formative evaluation, the evaluators determined that the various components of our curriculum could be compared with other positive youth development programs and were found to be consistent with social science research. Furthermore, the study made a firm recommendation that our curriculum is plausible and should have the desired effect if delivered as intended. 

Piloting in Botswana gave us the opportunity to fully develop and also pilot the platform to build our initial bank of evidence for validation. During the pilot stage, we took a period of six months, we learnt what were the main drivers in user adoption of the app. We refined communication methods and messaging style, we also sent users regular updates which were used to gather data; understand user preferences and how to better attract and keep users' attention. Some examples of our iterations included: 

- when we added the first challenge we had 140 users, 69% of whom took the challenge. 

- on the 3rd week of registration we removed email on registration which improved the onboarding journey: user drop off rate went from 15% before to 9% after

- on the same week we added a referrals (sharing) feature: referrals now contribute to 29% of the total base; and 

- on the 5th week we added rewards: user base increased by +80% the following week.

Throughout our journey, we have used the data we collect from user engagement to inform our iterations in order to improve the app with features that include adding lessons, quizzes, rewards, reminders, surveys and sharing. With these added features, we increased from 140 to 1500 users within a six month period. The Change Bot has become one of the most used apps in Botswana with a bank of evidence that we can now use to inform how we implement in other countries. 

With respect to our model that was evaluated by UCT; the pedagogy of our our solution is also informed and guided by the recommendations from this research. For example, the concept of engaging learners through gamification and bite-sized learning instead of large chunks of content is drawn from a combination of desk-top research, the pilot and recommendations from UCT's evaluation.Our pilot has also provided us with evidence to prove that our pedagogy works through micro-lessons, gamification, rewards and social behavioural change. In 2023, a company called Discovery supported us to improve our processes and systems towards more systematic collection and analysis of data to stipulate performance indicators and correlating standards for programme delivery. This is why our solution has a built-in customisable Content Management System.

In 2023 we piloted the Change Bot in Botswana (where we were able to access funding). This funding gave us the opportunity to develop the platform and generate user evidence within a context that is similar to South Africa (a neighbouring country that has strong political and economic ties). However, South Africa is where we believe our solution is most needed and has the opportunity to be adopted at a national level due to the current political will that was generated from the 2023 BRICS Ministerial meeting which officially placed entrepreneurship development within the top 8 priority areas for developing education. We would like to grow in tandem as the Ministry of Education tries to solve for how to incorporate entrepreneurship development within school. We hope to be able to approach the Ministry of Education from 2025 with an evidence based solution that has been supported by the likes of MIT. 

Through national adoption, our solution has the potential to reach over 3 million children. It is within this context that we believe now is the right time to engage in a LEAP Project. We have piloted in one community, but we are still iterating in both design and business model. This is where the support from LEAP expert researchers and social entrepreneurs to help build our approach to generating and using evidence to improve our product and strengthen children’s learning outcomes.

At the centre of the proposed solution, are the learners. We would like support on identifying the right quantitative and qualitative data through the platform and through in-person engagement.  The combination of both qualitative and quantitative data will provide a rich narrative to the complexities involved in education, learning and development work as numbers for example can be limiting in shedding light on the nuances in the experiences of the most marginalized children. Even best practice can fail through seemingly unassociated factors. We also seek support on the creation of primary and secondary questions to guide, inform and provide answers to the cause for success and failures in the interventions implemented in the changing landscape over the past 10 years. 

- What are the current gaps in existing Edtech interventions that seek to improve children's learning outcomes?

- Is our methodology plausible and consistent with current local and international social science research?

- Is the Changebot intervention causing the intended impact?

Our desired outputs:

- a learning brief that reveals structures and gaps in current Edtech interventions to further inform the design of the Monitoring and Evaluation tool

- strategies to develop and improve our current Monitoring and Evaluation tools for scale

- Learnings and recommendations that are informed from evaluating whether our methodology and entrepreneurship content plausible and consistent with current social science research

- Developing a framework that helps to evaluate whether the Changebot intervention is causing the intended impact

The learning brief of the gaps will inform the design of our Monitoring and Evaluation data collection tools to close the gap.

The Ministry of education in South Africa still does not have a good understanding of the impact of after-school interventions on school drop-out rates from the perspective of the beneficiary - the learners themselves, and how the routine data collected on students can be used effectively to improve educational outcomes. By developing strategies to improve our Monitoring and Evaluation tools, we can provide an all encompassing MEL framework that forms part of the rigor of data collection and analysis. The right kind of data about learners is instrumental in ensuring that our solution continues to implement appropriate support systems and interventions to improve learner outcomes.

We will therefore use the outputs as feedback for iteration to improve the content we provide on the platform as well as improve the app itself. It will also provide us credibility to approach the Ministry of Education to pilot our project towards national implementation since this is our medium to long-term goal. It will also provide us with credibility to approach potential funders and implementing partners to strengthen the sustainability of the project. We want to ensure that each stage of development, the solution is providing high quality evidence of impact.

Our desired long-term outcomes are:

- to strengthen the evidence that demonstrates that our intervention is causing the intended impact. As part of our long-term outcomes, we would also like to continue to engage with MIT Solve to investigate and validate the nature of our impact through its independent evaluation. 

- accredit our solution's methodology and content with MIT or leverage the institution's credibility to strengthen our solution's ability to create the intended impact not as an isolated solution but one that can contribute in organizing sectoral intervention for sustainable and national impact. In other words, we would like the excellence of what we produce through the outputs to be used as tools, strategies and frameworks across South Africa and beyond; especially as an Edtech solution that seeks to improve equitable social justice in the public education sector.

- Our long-term outcome is for this solution to be adopted within the national education system as part of the entrepreneurial development curriculum in South Africa for primary school learners in public schools. At an organisational level, the solution is able to reach 6000 children within the first 12 months of implementation. However, with national adoption it has the potential to reach 4 million children. As a LEAP project, we would be accelerated much faster in reaching our national adoption goal.