Street2School

Solution Name

Street2School

One-line solution summary.

A blended online and offline community learning platform that empowers young people across North Eastern Nigeria through access to basic foundational and soft skills.

What is your solution?

Street2School is an initiative that provides vulnerable young people (13-20 years) from marginalized communities across North East Nigeria access to basic literacy and numeracy and soft skills through our blended online and offline community learning hub. Where there is connectivity, our online platform connects youth volunteer educators (mainly students from tertiary institutions) to our target group (young people aged 13-20 years) from marginalized communities who provide 3 hours of learning and mentorship weekly. The online platform requires the user to have access to digital connectivity in order to access learning contents through WhatsApp which is a common collaborative tool for young people. For areas with no connectivity, we are leveraging the power of radio to drive our learning content to learners who may not have access to a WhatsApp or data bundles. Our offline platform makes use of local community spaces where young people who are registered members of a local community hub meet to access our learning content and, in their own language.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

There are currently 64 million young people aged between 10 and 24 in Nigeria; 63% of these youths are in the North majority being female. In Nigeria, UNICEF reports that about 10.5 million children and young people are not in school despite primary education being free and compulsory. Over 29% of children in NE Nigeria instead receive Qur’anic education which does not include basic literacy and numeracy. The growing insurgency since 2009 in addition to the economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices has largely discouraged enrolment in formal education especially girls thereby leaving them disengaged and unproductive members in their communities. Through Streets2School, we are bridging this gap by providing alternative and accelerated pathways to access to basic literacy and numeracy skills for these young people especially girls. 

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our target population is out-of-school adolescents between the ages of 13- 20 years from marginalized communities across Northeastern Nigeria. This cohort of young people is mostly Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who never got the opportunity to enroll in a formal school or dropped out of school due to armed conflict, as well as young girls that didn't enroll as a result of socio-cultural norms.

Our solution allows our target audience to access learning conveniently, build resilience and skills that better position them for opportunities in education, entrepreneurship, and employment.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

The design thinking process allowed us to identify 3 key needs that needs to be fulfilled in order to get our target population to learn. First was the need to learn at user convenient time as most of our target population are vulnerable people from resource-limited backgrounds who have to seek for livelihood to support their families at the times when their peers are learning in a typical Nigerian conventional school (8am-2pm), secondly was the need to learn at user pace, this was for the fact that most of our target population have outgrown their appropriate education level and cannot easily learn with their peers, and finally the need to learn at user preferred local language. We were able to cater for these key needs by leveraging widely used digital communication platforms like whatsapp, Facebook as well as conventional media tools like radio sharing learning contents using voice notes, pictures and small byte videos while complimenting areas without digital connectivity with in person learning, both component (online and offline) were provided in local community spaces, at user convenient time, pace and local language (Hausa and Kanuri). 

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improving learning opportunities and outcomes for learners across their lifetimes, from early childhood on (Learning)

Our solution's stage of development:

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

We followed community-based testing, implementation and verification of both the online and off-line project design components. During the testing phase, we enrolled about 125 participants from two challenged communities (Kukawa and Ngala); 60% males and 40% females. The “Bulama '' often referred to as the community head kindly provided us a space in the community to use as classrooms to test our offline learning component. He also played an active role in mobilizing members of his community to have their children enroll in our program. We organized six in-person classes (of an hour each) during which the teachers/students provide feedback so that we can better evaluate our learning content and make changes where and when necessary. We also tested the online component creating a community of 25 learners and so far, we have gathered positive feedback from students and the teachers.  

Information on our MVP can be accessed through the link below

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1a-xnstD7a-EOP67UPyJW2jiQipL1YVrawTmvRlqaVg8/htmlview#gid=86235111 

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Team Lead:

Ahmed Abdulkadir