Girls-4-Girls (Kytabu)

Solution Pitch

The Problem

A number of factors, including high rates of poverty, early marriage, teen pregnancy, and distance from education institutions, contribute to a high drop-out rate of school-age girls in Kenya. In fact, just one in 5 girls who enroll in primary school continue to their eighth year, making it difficult for girls to access critical opportunities for education, mentorship, and peer support. 

The Solution

Girls-4-Girls deploys Kytabu's Learning Management System (LMS), mobile application, and SMS text solution to its students. The LMS acts both as a learning content repository and a virtual classroom that slots girls in similar geo-tagged locations and a similar grade into one group. The virtual classroom exists for 1 to 3 months and incorporates videos, assignments and collaborative problems daily. Students commit to specific goals and can unlock badges, receive credits, and move up learning levels. 

Girls-4-Girls adds in a digital mentorship component to Kytabu’s core product, using adaptive technology to provide each girl with a personalised learning journey that enables them to study according to their level. Once students complete a course, they have the opportunity to engage in competitions and compete for credits, which they can spend on education and in their communities. These competitions in turn incentivize more girls to participate, expanding peer-to-peer mentorship, and further strengthening the community of students on the platform.  

Stats

There are currently 570 girls participating in the Girls-4-Girls pilot project.

Market Opportunity

Girls-4-Girls’ target market is the 6.6 million Kenyan girls under 18. The government of Kenya has allocated $477 million for girl’s education. Since the pandemic started in March, Kenya has seen a rise in teen pregnancies and in parents and students looking for safe, girl-focused virtual learning spaces. According to the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, more than 30 percent of Kenyan girls are married before the age of 18, a large percentage as the result of teenage pregnancies. Girls-4-Girls offers an online learning, peer support, and mentorship platform for these girls. While other existing solutions provide financial sponsorship to schools that are currently understaffed with human and material resources, Girls-4-Girls provides online learning tools that support both students and instructors. In this Covid environment, Girls-4-Girls is supporting closed community learning.

Organization Highlights

• Kytabu has been selected for awards including the African Entrepreneurship Award, the King Baudouin Africa Development Prize, 

• Kytabu is a part of the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) network

• Partnerships with the Mastercard Foundation and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

Partnership Goals

Girls-4-Girls currently seeks:

• Technical expertise and support to assist with application development of the social engagement platform, especially to incorporate new technologies such as AI to reach more girls in more places

• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) expertise to build robust processes to use data to increase social engagement

• Business strategy expertise to scale responsibly.