Nooks - Creating Schools Without Teachers

1. Modern education is not leading to economic and social equality. This is due to a critical mismatch between what education provides and what people need and want. 

2. Creation of self-learning spaces called ‘Nooks’, i.e.  physical spaces equipped with resources such as laptops, internet, tools, waste materials and technology. Free-of-charge for everyone, Nooks enable community members to discover their interests and acquire practical skills. They engage in project-based learning of their own choice which addresses real-life issues in creative and innovative ways, helps them to create independent livelihoods and become their own job creators.

3. Through Nooks, communities caught in endless cycles of marginalization break their way out of it by creating skills and developing ideas in-tune with their personal needs, interests and aspirations. Instead of creating dependencies on others to solve their problems, it empowers communities to do it themselves.

The exclusionary and outdated education model prevents social upward mobility, reinforces inequality and cements poverty. This is contributing to the perpetuation of economic vulnerability of marginalised communities and increasing barriers to global participation and inclusion.   

In Bangladesh, an overall 24 % of the population lives in poverty (measured at the rather unrealistic threshold of USD 1.9/day). Youth unemployment has doubled between 2000 and 2017, and 27 % of 15-24 year old youth were not engaged in any form of education, employment, or training in 2018. In schools, dropout rates stand at 20 % for elementary schools (2016) and 38 % for lower-secondary level (2017).

While India shows a continuous track record of economic growth, it is anything but inclusive. Inequality is sharply rising and India has now the largest number of poor people in the world next to Nigeria. More than 27 % youth are excluded from education, employment, or training, while about 90 % of the working population is employed in the informal sector.

In Rwanda, 125,000 first-time job seekers can’t find a job each year while an overall 65 % of youth are underemployed. Uganda has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa with 13.3%.

Everyone has their own dreams and aspirations. But somewhere along our lives, many lose their inner compass. Conditioned by school, family and society, many people give up their dreams and simply accept their fate. In the communities we work with, this often means to accept a job at the lowest rank of the ladder as a human, a life limited to taking care of the family as a woman, following the already pre-given path of what your parents do as kids. We are working with those people who no longer want to have their wings clipped but are ready to start flying - labourers who want to become artists; housewives interested in technology-based solutions; children from ‘failing schools’ who start to create independent livelihoods following their own aspirations. 

This is achieved because Nooks are an inclusive, free and democratic space for the entire community. From the set-up stage to developing learning goals, setting the rules governing the Nook and deciding about what tools to have, everything is in the hands of the learners themselves. At Nooks, learners discover many new possibilities, explore areas of skills and learning that they couldn’t attempt before, and build confidence in creating a different life.

Education must be relevant to and satisfy each individual’s needs, interests and aspirations. It is possible to achieve this only when individuals are empowered to create their own education, based on their own specific contexts.The answer does not lie in creating a new system for all, but in enabling the creation of infinite learning models that are developed and customised contextually.

Nooks are able to achieve this.

A Nook is a self-learning space, created in a small building, supplied with tools, laptops, internet, materials and recycled trash. Individuals from the communities gather at the Nook, create goals based on their own personal needs and aspirations with the support of a local Nook Manager and the Nook community, and attempt to achieve them by pursuing real-life projects. While each individual or small groups of people have different goals, they collaborate with and help each other and work together as a team.

There are no teachers or facilitators at the Nook. Instead, members learn from each other, the Internet and others who may have greater experience. In essence, the learners find their own knowledge sources and therefore customise how they learn. 

The goals that learners create can really be anything - from building a house to playing the guitar to researching and adapting new methods to improve agriculture yields. Goals are usually bite-sized and incremental to enable achieving larger aspirations like becoming a musician, a carpenter, or an organic farmer. Also, instead of validation via standardised testing, the learners receive feedback on their progress from local and global communities and peers.

Nooks run at less than USD 500 per month, enabling education for about 75 learners, making it cheaper than even many government schools on a per capita basis. They are free to use to learners and not restricted to any particular age group or gender or other forms of identity. Nooks are managed by the learners themselves. They decide the technology tools they must procure in order to progress in their projects (welding machines, arduinos, motors, app development platforms, etc) and prioritize resources accordingly. 

Nooks are at the mid-point between age-old methods of self-learning throughout life based on varied experiences, as well as using modern technology to uncover the learnings of others. This is the perfect momentum for us to rediscover education.

Worldwide, ‘education’ has become the exclusive monopoly of schools and colleges, and ‘knowledge’ has become a scarce product that these hierarchical institutions deliver by imposing a pre-given knowledge onto their ‘subjects’. The latter have minimal agency to decide about what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, where they want to learn, and what they want to do with their learning later on. 

Nooks are turning the tables on this antiquated model of education. They overcome the worldwide-existing phenomenon that your place of birth, your parents’ jobs and social background and your gender will decide what kind of education you get and how successful your education will be. By taking away the monopoly of learning from these institutions, Nooks enable the learners from all backgrounds and walks of life to take back education into their own hands. Through this, learners also challenge the common-sense assumption that only the monolithic, standardised, Western-based knowledge that is taught in schools is of any value. Instead, learners start creating and sharing local context-based ways of knowledge that are relevant for their lives and indeed positively impact their lives. Whatever they learn at the Nooks, based on the freedom of choice, has real value and real meaning to them. They start to realise that sources of knowledge and learning are not scarce but abundant in their own community and see the community, as well as their own lives, full of possibilities rather than limitations that the modern education system imposes on them.

Once learners start coming to the Nook, a process of self-discovery and self-realisation kicks in. This is achieved by exposing learners to many new areas and providing them with the time, space, resources, encouragement and opportunity to ask questions, challenge common-sense assumptions, explore new skills and talents, fail, repeat, succeed, and gradually build up their own learning portfolio based on real-life projects. The attainment of learning goals they set for themselves makes them realise that they are far more capable, and they become more daring to try out new things and come up with new solutions. 

In the short-term, this will empower learners to become more aspirational, develop abilities for critical thinking, build their own, adaptable learning models, increase their self-confidence, master a certain number of skills and address real-life issues. In the longer term, Nook learners will be able to create a livelihood of their own choice; they develop a more critical and detailed understanding of themselves and the world at large, and they will be able to create more ‘alternatives’ for and with others.

11 Nooks are amidst economically challenged communities and have enabled first-time usage of Internet and computers among 85% of learners. Most learners are working on STEAM-related topics for the first time. Most of the Nook-learners are experiencing self-designed learning and working on topics of interest for the first time. Many of our young learners categorically believe that they learn better at Nooks than at school. 

Learner testimonies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzhcKbka0Ds.

1. Between October 2016 and October 2019, we have directly impacted more than 10,000 learners across 15 Nooks in three countries. 

2. By March 2021, we aim to directly impact 15,000 learners across 25 Nooks.

3. In five years, we aim to directly impact 100,000 learners across 200 Nooks in South Asia, Africa and potentially new geographic areas.

In Year 1 we will set-up a Nook Hub in Dhaka in collaboration with a local partner. The Nook Hub will be located at Mirpur, a particularly weak socio-economic area of Dhaka with a population of 632,664. Many of them live in poor conditions in the numerous slums in this area and work as day labourers or in the nearby garment factories. 

Nook Hubs are a combination of a Nook and a growth office. These nodal points enable us to create teams in other geographies, to allow the concept to be locally customised and spread. Outside India, we have one Nook Hub in Rwanda and another one coming up in Zimbabwe. Over the coming five years, we will set-up 45 more Nooks across Bangladesh, directly impacting 17,600 learners and indirectly impacting their families and communities through new income-generation, and the development of local-based skills and knowledge.

We also aim to pass on the self-learning knowledge and best practices to other organisations and partners across Bangladesh through various forms of collaboration and open source sharing of know-how so they can start their own self-learning spaces.

Bangladesh is a new market for Project DEFY to implement the self-designed learning model. The team will need time to understand the local culture and its nuances and build a strong network of local partner organisations as well as set-up its own local team. Here we require people with some basic experience in self-designed education or at least people open to ideas of alternative learning and education, which thus far is rarely known in Bangladesh. 

Moreover, a key aspect for the success of the Nook model in Bangladesh will be to engage the local community with the Nook’s purpose, practical use and benefits, given that across South Asia there is a strong mindset that pushes schooling and tuition classes as top priorities. 

On a global level, education policies are often not creating enabling environments for alternative education spaces and organisations to thrive. It needs to be analysed in how far this is the case with Bangladesh and then closely monitored over the years.

Continuous financial support is further critical for DEFY in order to establish and scale-up the Nook model across Bangladesh. 

Project DEFY will also have to understand the legal nuances of setting up an organisation in Bangladesh working in the education sector which comes with its own rules and regulations. A close look at the changing government policies is needed to align our work with the system and to make sure all legal requirements and standards are met.

Understanding cultural nuances will be best achieved through implementation of the partnership model Project DEFY has established. The experiences of teaming up with local partners in Rwanda have helped us to establish best practices and procedures as well as adapting and customizing the model to local needs. 

We will work closely with the local partner(s) to sow the seeds for an in-depth understanding of the broader philosophy as well as concrete practice of self-designed learning, thereby capacitating individuals to become progressive educators.    

The participatory, community-based model will help to ensure that local perspectives and opinions are reflected in the Nook model. A continuous dialogue with the community and a local team on the ground at the nook before, during and after its set-up, as well as various outreach activities, will help to build broad acceptance of the self-designed learning model. Through the first success stories and role models that emerge from the Nook, this will be further strengthened. We can also build on our experiences in the Indian context.

DEFY will endeavour to work closely with system participants such as policy makers, government officials and organisations in the education sector to create the knowledge and understanding of alternative education systems. 

By Year 2, DEFY will have worked with local partners to create a funding feasibility plan for sustenance of the Nook model.

Through our local partners and advisors available through the MIT Solve ecosystem network, DEFY will progressively work towards establishing the legal and compliance mechanisms in the country.

The Bangladeshi education system is one of the largest in the world with 21.9 million children in kindergartens and primary schools. With 161 million people, Bangladesh is the world’s eighth most populous nation, with its size expected to rise to 193 million by 2050. Annually, 2.1 million people will enter the prime working-age population. This enormous population growth coupled with the lack of economic opportunities and inadequate educational provisions for the masses provides a large market opportunity for the wide-scale introduction of the Nook model. 

DEFY intends to enter the Bangladeshi market after rapidly expanding in India over the last few years. This will be our first Hub in South Asia which will be linked to our head office in India, thereby creating synergies and knowledge transfer and growth in educational alternatives across the continent. As outlined above, we aim to set-up the pilot Nook Hub in Dhaka and from there steadily expand across the nation to build a network of Nooks.

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Full time = 15

Part time = 1

Contractors = 4

Project DEFY’s core team combines a broad expertise in working across traditional as well as alternative education landscapes; an in-depth understanding of social issues, trends and dynamics; a long-standing experience in the corporate sector; a profound know-how in developing and successfully implementing social innovations; and overall a three-year track record of successfully delivering self-designed learning solutions across continents and countries.

Abhijit Sinha, CEO: A social innovator with established track-record of low-cost innovations in the education and healthcare sector; recipient of MIT IDIN Funding Award for Makerspace support in 2016; designs DEFY’s programs and trains new talent on implementation. 

Megha Bhagat, Chief of Growth: A human rights lawyer with eleven+ years experience in the social development sector; recipient of US State Department’s IVLP Fellowship and Rockefeller Social Innovation Fellow; designs partnerships and monitors legal and compliance framework.

Dr. Christoph Neusiedl, CIO: A PhD graduate researching alternative education models in India; develops and monitors the entire chain of impacts of DEFY’s Nook model from the micro- to the macro-scale and develops new solutions to strengthen impact.

Madhavi Murlidhar, COO: A serial entrepreneur with 15 years experience in the IT industry; responsible for effective operations and financial procedures.

Huidrom Boicha Singh: An experienced social sciences graduate with extensive experience  in rights-based Development approaches; easily adaptable to new contexts and environments with working experience in Africa; in charge of setting-up international Nooks and Nook Hubs.

We are partnering with various organisations globally as funding and nook building partners. As a vision Prohect DEFy wants to pass over the knowledge to more organisations and communities so that a global community of Nooks can be created that will be self sustaining. We work with on ground partners to co build the Nook, train a community member identified with the partner and then provide back end support.

With funding organisations we co create a vision for community impact and create a joint vision with the on ground partner to utilise the funds.

Some key partners are listed below:

1. Non Profit partners for Nook building partnerships: 

Dream Village

Headstreams 

Kshamtalaya Foundation

The Roundglass Foundation

SINA

1. Funding partners

The Bachman Foundation

NASSCOM Foundation

Tesco

Cisco

Natraj Foundation

DEFY serves the people living in poverty in marginalised communities across the globe. Our customers are primarily organisations, including but not limited to non profits, schools and universities that are working in education innovation and looking to create alternative models of learning. We work with the customers in a service model implementing our self designed learning model ‘Nooks’ and are paid for the services. As a non profit we also raise funds through grants, impact investments and corporate funding.

Over the past 3 years we have created a robust model of sustained donor funding, corporate partnerships under the corporate social responsibility ambit in India, service fees gathered from the service model implementation with other organisations, investments from family foundations.

While we began with individual donations we steadily shifted to corporate funding implementing the social impact mandates of corporate in education sector.

We then developed the service model by identifying organisations, schools, universities that were working in the sector and started setting up Nooks as a service with them.

We have steadily raised impact investments for organisation growth and global expansion strategy.

A crucial part of Project DEFY’s track record is the principle to enter a market only together with a partner organisation that knows the realities on the ground and can help us to quickly gain foothold in as well as expand across any new locality. We are looking for partners that aim to overcome societal barriers with the help of technology and innovation and who believe that people have the capacity to help themselves, if given adequate space, opportunities and resources to do so. As such, Tiger IT Foundation seems to be the ideal partner to help realising our vision of bringing the self-designed education revolution to Bangladesh. We further trust that the foundation can help us overcoming the following specific barriers: 

• Initial funding 

• Connecting with relevant organisations to expand the Nook model

• Creating media exposure, speaking opportunities etc. to promote the self-designed learning model

• Tiger IT as company starting a movement of ‘getting rid of rigid degree requirements’ for job applications and instead relying on learning portfolios, practical skills and real-life experiences. This will help to start changing the mindset of general population regarding the value of schooling and obtaining (i.e. paying for) a degree vs obtaining practical, concrete skills and engaging in real-life projects, thus creating more broad acceptance for the idea of self-designed learning

• Identifying local talents that will be employed in key roles of our Bangladesh operations 

• Mentors in legal and compliance

• Connecting to relevant policy actors

We are looking to partner up with a variety of organisations to help us rapidly anchor and quickly spread the Nook model across marginalised communities throughout Bangladesh. At the end of October 2019, Project DEFY team members will travel to Bangladesh to connect with potentially interested partners such as JAAGO, EDUCO, Bangladesh Youth Leadership Centre, APON Foundation, Spreeha Bangladesh, Choice to Change Foundation, UCEP Bangladesh, BRAC and others.

To establish our operations in Bangladesh, we are looking for local
NGOs and social enterprises that can serve as the local on the ground
partner to identify marginalised communities where we set-up nooks and
that know those communities well and ideally already have a foothold in
the given community and hence can support us adequately; Bangladeshi
corporations that are interested in sponsoring education-based CSR
activities to help us further expand and set up new Nooks across the
country; local governments and city councils that are interested to
introduce and scale the Nook Model in their locality; think-tanks and
research institutions to help measure and document the impact of our
Nooks as well as continuously develop the impact matrix.