Project Rangeet: Empower The Next Generation of Superheroes

-Social Emotional and Sustainability Learning is neither thoughtfully developed nor organised, therefore not valued by educators

-Lack of methods and tools that deliver consistently high levels of child engagement and teacher enthusiasm

-Educators and administrators are unable to identify and measure impact at scale in a timely and unbiased manner

Project Rangeet(in Hindi “Rang”=colour, “Geet”=song) organises around the SDGs via three topics: Self, Society and Sustainability. Through music, art and storytelling, children learn to value and protect themselves, embrace all humanity and treasure all life on earth. 

The app is replete with instructions enabling anyone to empower children around these values, tracks content delivery and measures impact at scale. It recognises and rewards participants with redeemable tokens for teaching classes and co-creating content.

App-based delivery, distributed measurement, and positive reinforcement loops expand the surface area of impact, equipping children and rewarding teachers and community members to enable this transformation.

The problems we are tackling are global and existential, with the most vulnerable and disenfranchised communities existing in countries like Bangladesh. The IPCC report on climate change points toward low lying countries being at the greatest risk. In a planet hurtling toward a dangerous tipping point, where misplaced values drive inaction, how do we galvanise communities and governments to value self, society and therefore nature and biodiversity? How do we act to shape a compassionate world in which nature and society are at peace?

The problem is that education outside of academics it neither valued nor thoughtfully developed. Children don’t have well organised and measurable access to tools that will help them thrive in this rapidly changing world. From the top down, misplaced priorities and policies are driving a lack of emphasis on these issues.

Social Emotional and Sustainability Learning is a sustainable exit from the current crises that imperil communities by discrimination, selfishness and by direct association, from climate change.

The objective of Project Rangeet is to strike at the heart of these issues, and to comprehensively change the narrative in a fun, engaging and measurable way.

Rangeet works with school and tribal communities. The content, created in English, is translated and contextualised. For example, in the lessons on empathy / discrimination, the difference between the India and Bangladesh versions is significant. We introduce local nuance in terms of bullying, religious and gender bias. Children are taught to understand the value of locally occurring natural capital.

The system of co-creation of contextualised content with local communities generates relatable lesson plans. Participants are rewarded with tokens that are redeemable for discounts on books, groceries and mobile recharge.

We ran two pilots in Bangladesh with 50 schools and 1,500 students. The first with BRAC schools(2018), the second in Government schools(2019). The results, learnings and adaptation are in a subsequent section. 

Through this collaborative process we hope to awaken society with children challenging the status quo and following in the footsteps of inspirational leaders. The rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg, resulting in climate action and social justice, is inspiring. Enlightened communities standing up for change around the SDGs, combating vested interests, are breaking the shackles of inaction that endanger society and planet. Project Rangeet aims to replicate this in a widespread manner for their long term benefit.

Multi-language lesson plans for teachers to deliver the Rangeet curriculum to primary school children. Training is carried out in person, via VTC and sample content within the app. The curriculum is organised around the UN SDGs and categorised into three learning umbrellas (topics): Self, Society and Sustainability which are further grouped into modules. Each module has 6-8 lessons of 50 minutes each. 

SELF: We believe that for children to thrive, they need to stand on a foundation of self-confidence, self-reliance and mindfulness. They need to VALUE and PROTECT their minds, their bodies and their rights.

-Mindfulness

-Health and Nutrition

-Children Are Citizens Too: Rights and responsibilities

SOCIETY: Only then will they be able to VALUE and PROTECT all Human Beings and influence an egalitarian society aware of issues around colour, caste, socio economic status, sexuality, religion and gender.

-I Am: Empathy, diversity and discrimination

-No Bully: Different types of bullying and solutions

-Girls = Boys: Gender equality and positive masculinity

SUSTAINABILITY: And on this dual foundation of society and self, our superheroes will VALUE and PROTECT ALL life on earth.

-Song Of A Tree: Importance of trees and plants in land and ocean ecosystems

-Earth Positive: Climate change, give more to earth than you take from it

-Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

Content, which includes minute-by-minute instructions on how to run a Rangeet class, is delivered via a mobile app with tools that measure impact at scale, enabling the inclusion of 21st century skills into every child’s report card. Impact tools in the app are aligned with each module’s learning goals (baseline / end line) and collect data, real-time and at scale, instead of labour intensive manual methods. The app recognises and rewards teachers, children, parents, and their communities with redeemable tokens (called SuperPowers) for teaching Rangeet classes, co-creating content and promoting the platform. These tokens can be redeemable against goods and services supported by Corporate Social Responsibility programs, NGOs or governments. For example, participants in Bangladesh are rewarded with tokens that are redeemable for discounts on books, groceries and mobile recharge. 

App based delivery, distributed measurement, coupled with positive reinforcement loops expand the surface area of the platform’s impact.

Download the app (see how we work and sample lessons):

1. Scan the QR code 

2. Download from the App Store Or Play Store 

3. Sign up, click on Discover Project Rangeet!

If you are on a mobile, click here to Discover Project Rangeet.

We have deliberately designed Rangeet with an emphasis on simplicity, determined execution and profitability in order to achieve scale.

We have clearly articulated the problem, our solution and have remained committed to executing it since inception; this article about persistence and payoff has inspired us.

Project Rangeet is an idea whose time has come. The increasing spotlight on social and climate justice, particularly in developing economies, is highlighted in a January 2019 McKinsey report: Purpose Driven Marketing, Agam Dhingra.

We occupy a niche. Of 40 Indian Edutech start-ups featured in this article, and further independent research, we have found that none are focused as strongly on the important maxim “It starts with you”. We believe kids need 21st Century Skills to thrive and must demand what we are promising them in relation to the SDGs, but education systems fall well short.

We are educationally sound. While other social emotional learning programs exist, they have not identified what works with the psychology of primary school children. Rangeet uses proven methodologies that work in these classrooms, with each module including Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.

We are focused on affordability and profitability, so that we can scale. Michael Porter argues in this Ted Talk, that to be meaningful and achieve scale, profitable businesses need to take the lead in solving climate and social issues.

Lastly, our successful and innovative pilots in Bangladesh are perhaps the most compelling evidence in support of our innovation.

We believe every child has the right to be courageous, compassionate and grateful. Our vision is for thriving schools full of happy children, teachers and administrators. We provide an effective and measurable framework to support schools.

Our actions are focussed on our vision:

-Continuous focus on curriculum development.

-Ongoing improvement of delivery methods to assist teachers; processes that respect that every child is unique.

-Processes to stay in touch with teachers and build community so that classrooms are filled with inclusion and enthusiasm.

An independent report was authored for each of the pilots:

Summary Pilot ONE(Dr.Habib Dhaka University):“The results suggest that a positive change has occurred in BRAC students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in a number of social aspects embedded in the modules. Data revealed that students’ of experimental group had positive behaviour, perspectives and awareness about targeted social issues. This small scale project brought explicit hope that both attitudinal and behavioral changes on social issues can be achieved among young children through providing joyful and excitement learning environment and interactive teaching learning experiences. The diversified and varied social issues emerging across the country indicate the urgency of more of these programs for our children.” For more click here

Summary Pilot TWO(a2i): "students performed better in all aspects of Rangeet activities after taking part in the sessions. This small pilot project proved that complex issues like discrimination, diversity, empathy and bullying can be taught to the younger kids using interactive and easy teaching-learning methodology." For more click: here

Pilot video: Bangladesh Superheroes

In Bangladesh, we have worked with the Department of Primary Education (DPE), a2i and BRAC, where we have run a 50 school pilot. We aim to first scale this up to 1,000 schools, then to 75,000 schools and hope to work with BRAC as implementation partner.

Some of the entities we aim to sign with:

Important note: the following is a projection. Our perceived odds of conversion of each client is multiplied by total potential revenue, and the expected value of revenue/client numbers are taken into our projections. All variables can be tweaked over time as the business develops.

Global Indian International Schools (GIIS), India, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, UAE; 

Social Star (India)

Laya Resources ( India)

Wildlife Conservation Trust (India)

Digital Empowerment Foundation (India)

Nanhi Kali (India) 

Now/3 months: 

Teachers: 65 

Students: 3,000

Of Which Bangladesh: 

Teachers: 50

Students: 2,250

1y:

Teachers: 1,600

Students: 65,000

Of Which Bangladesh: (Funds needed to scale)

Teachers: 1,500

Students: 60,000

5yrs:

Teachers: 200,000

Students: 7,000,000

Of Which Bangladesh: 

Teachers: 110,000

Students: 4,500,000

Estimate of children served

B2C strategy: In the medium term, our ambition is to work with partners (e.g.SocialStar) to offer Rangeet to anyone with or without formal training who wants to empower children around these topics. We hope this strategy will achieve "hockey stick" adoption but will keep refining it, ensuring that our current plans are not diluted. We have adopted the Tim Harford "Adapt" approach - try, fail fast, and adapt.

a) Continue R&D on lesson plans, translation and localisation for various communities

b) Develop offline mode for the app so it works in the remotest locations, which have no connectivity, to ensure that data collected is synced when the user gets to a stable network

c) Expanding user base: focus is to grow our work in DPE schools, and execute our B2C strategy

d) Present Project Rangeet at conferences such as UN South-South Cooperation to gain exposure, clients and new partnerships

e) Seek out partnerships with companies that work in the area of parent / community engagement / leadership development so that the 21st Century Skills the children are learning are accepted at home. This is crucial because it will be counterproductive to develop children in this form of learning and then find that communities are resisting change. For example, it will be good to leverage the capability of companies such as Dost Education

f) Develop more comprehensive remote training material

g) Gain buy-in from donors who can partner and fund the SuperPower tokens to give them meaning. E.g. fund discounts, offers and rewards in the manner that Grameenphone, EkShop and Rokomari in Bangladesh have done

Legal: 

Storytelling is an integral part of Project Rangeet so that children relate better to the topic. Hard to grasp concepts for primary school children like diversity, discrimination, carbon footprint or climate change are best introduced via a story, or an art activity. For example “The Paper Bag Princess” by Robert Munsch is a wonderful story about a strong and clever girl who outwits a dragon and saves a prince, breaking fairytale gender stereotypes. We encourage our teachers to purchase books like this to read to their classes. We work with very low income schools, and this cost could be a barrier to adoption.

Cultural:

Contextualising and translating our content for Bangladesh primary schools was done in consultation with BRAC and a2i and was challenging. We made significant improvements from the first pilot to the second, this is reflected in the final evaluations. However we need to automate our way of working to scale and reduce barriers.

Technical:

Currently our app works in low connectivity zones, but to be even more widely adopted, it needs to work in zero connectivity areas which are quite prevalent in South Asia and other developing countries which are our target markets.

Financial:

Project Rangeet has been built out of a combination of personal time and financial resources, as well as revenue from our pilot with BRAC. All of these earnings have been reinvested into creating a brand strategy (our why, how, lexicon etc.), video and graphic assets. To scale from here we need capital.

Legal:

Over the next year we will aggressively pursue trying to secure such direct licensing deals with publishers. Where we are unsuccessful, we will develop our own content.

Cultural:

We have begun to work with Language As A Service (LaaS) companies for automating translation. This will help the scaling issue and bring down barriers as we go across cultural boundaries. In the future we may consider creating communities for "learning and earning" where teachers around the world can submit content for approval and use, to lower cultural barriers. We are working on refining this co-creation model.

Technical:

We are planning on developing an “offline” version of the app which will allow for data collection into a mobile device anywhere, and uploading to cloud servers once in a reasonable data network. However, we see this problem becoming less relevant over time as data networks keep improving at the speed they are.

Financial:

There will come a time when we are going to require some operating capital for scale. If we are successful in our submission, then the pilot in Bangladesh to scale up to 1,000 / 10,000 / 70,000 schools (potentially up to 10 million children) becomes a reality quickly. If not, we will seek to raise capital at the appropriate time in the near future, or go through a potentially long drawn out approval process to scale the pilot which is not ideal as it will drain our resources and lose momentum that we've built with the teachers and community.

Bangladesh has inspired us. We first presented Project Rangeet to BRAC and a2i in September 2016 and travelled to Bangladesh in April 2017. We travelled extensively across Bangladesh, teaching Project Rangeet classes (in our pre App days) in schools in tin sheds in rice fields, urban settings and youth centres in shanties. The picture below, taken in a BRAC youth centre in a Dhaka suburb inspired our “WHY” and drives us till this day to effect widespread change in Bangladesh and India.

We met with BRAC management and high ranking a2i officials and it was decided to run pilots for Government and BRAC schools. We designed the pilot program in coordination with BRAC / a2i officials, translated our society umbrella into Bangla and contextualised the program to be culturally relevant in Bangladesh.

In mid 2018 we went back to Bangladesh to train 30 BRAC teachers. We ran three modules in 30 schools over a six month period and returned in between to do further teacher training.

In early 2019 we visited the National Academy of Primary Education (NAPE) in Mymensingh and trained 20 Government school teachers, and began a pilot featuring two modules. This pilot adopted our app and was a full blown pilot with teachers using the content delivery features, as well as the geo tagging / recording modules for each lesson taught. We also tested and implemented the token redemption feature.

We believe the pilots have been very successful and we are poised for widespread adoption.

Not Applicable

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In total we are a full-time team of 6 and work with external co conspirators: teachers, education administrators, designers, animators, translators, musicians, writers and social media specialists; and a tech company called task.io that we seed funded which:

- is building an ecosystem where people are rewarded for creating change;

- promotes social funding; and

- shines a light on brand and individual achievement, providing transparent insight into how impact is created.

This is the engine that drives Project Rangeet. 

Trained teacher and music educator, Priyanka, the child of an Indian civil servant grew up all over the world, constantly having to fit in, discovered that compassion is her religion. Karishma, an entrepreneur, grew up in a rigid education system she didn’t fit into, experienced the harshest education inequality, wants to deliver experiences to children they will be grateful for. Ex JPMorgan banker and entrepreneur, Simran, was hit with a realisation while teaching a 4th grade class that the underprivileged are often defeated at birth; he wants every child to have the courage to live the life they choose. 

Rangeet evolved when the founders’ paths came together, bringing with it three distinct perspectives on the future of education and a vision for next generation superheroes. 

Rangeet operates at the intersection of pedagogy, curriculum design, music, creativity, storytelling, technology, finance and entrepreneurship, the sum of the founders’ cumulative backgrounds.

But of equal importance, is our passion and focus. We have chosen to develop Rangeet because of a common epiphany, and a problem we are passionately committed to solving. 

Steve Jobs spoke of focus and the importance of saying no. Without focus, he said, you are doomed to a life of distraction, a life in which others’ priorities dictate what you spend your time on and as you move from one shiny object to another, you get a lot of things done, but a few things done well. 

We believe our passion, focus and backgrounds are congruent to our goals.

We have worked closely with a2i, BRAC and Dhaka University designing, implementing and measuring the impact of Project Rangeet and look forward to rolling it out in a phased manner.

Linzi Hawkin is a brand strategist, ocean activist and entrepreneur. Linzi helped us articulate our brand beliefs, positioning statement, lexicon, the actors in our universe and what each stands for, as well as our stories, values and aspirations. 

Hema Nazareth, the graphic artist behind our logo and visual identity drew the original superheroes, illustrated our stories and brought them to life. 

Pink Elephink's proprietor Riya Mahajan animated Hema's characters in this elevator pitch which elegantly explains what we do. 

Steve Walker and Matt Rickard, founders of task.io, the platform on which Project Rangeet runs, have supported our growth and functionality requirements. We now have a viable product which we will continue to co-develop with task.io. Delivery, tracking, rewards and impact measurement can all happen at scale thanks to our partnership with task.io.

Reverie Language Technologies who are building language equality on the internet. Reverie runs AI based services that we use to translate our content into multiple languages.

Rangeet Business Canvas

Project Rangeet has three core offerings:

-Train-the-teacher material

-Remote teacher training 

-Content delivery, monitoring, impact measurement, rewards

Optional:

-Translation/contextualisation

-Refresher courses

Our topmost priority is to be affordable in order to serve the communities we work with to achieve scale, for which we have to ensure we are financially viable and well-priced to sustain growth. 

Our pricing policies are designed to be simple to avoid cognitive inertia. Clients must immediately understand our value proposition, and then think - wow that's affordable!

Project Rangeet Financial Model

Revenues:  Annual per user cost for our product and services is a function of the total users for an individual or organisation, offered in decreasing slab prices to incentivise growth:

Annual client revenue = number of licenses*slab-price. This is what a teacher at a standalone school, school system or anyone who wants to impart  Rangeet to children pay. The optional services are provided basis mutual discussion. 

*Revenue/client numbers are probabilistically adjusted and can model up different scenarios

Our costs are: 

-License cost to use supplementary material

-R&D (development costs)

-Salaries including accounts, admin, legal, teacher/user support and tech support

-Software and Maintenance

-Rent, SG&A

-Marketing

Costs scale with growth/time and modelled accordingly

Overview of tabs:

Assumptions: that drive formulae

Initial Investments: funds spent so far

BRAC DPE Pilots: revenue and how we funded our initial investments

DPE Scale Up: how we will spend funds if we win and how long we can sustain the project 

Consolidated Forecast: 5Y projection

We funded our Initial Investments through personal time, resources and the BRAC DPE Pilots

Going forward we seek funds to run the DPE pilot and scale up as contemplated in this tab: DPE Scale Up. This assumes no license fees from the DPE, which is funded by the grant / prize and shows the funds required and timeframe. The pilot can scale up and and run as contemplated, and as shown in the financial model, for 3-4 years with the grant/prize funds in a self sustaining manner, which allows for the necessary runway to raise further grants / government funding on success. 

Outside of the DPE schools, longer term - our most sustainable path to financial stability is through client growth - building stable revenue streams, sales and expansion of our footprint. 

The Consolidated Forecast sheet allows us to simulate our revenue and cost profile, to figure out the cost / revenue profile that helps us achieve breakeven and stable growth.

Our break even occurs at around 2,500-3,000 paying licenses after which the company will run in a self sustaining manner.

Project Rangeet has identified a problem whose time has come. The planet is hurtling toward points of no return that require attitudinal and behavioural change. We have executed a successful pilot in Bangladesh (results shared) and are ready to scale. 

Empathy values and learning is being adopted into the core curriculum of the next five-year plan (PEDP4) for primary level education in Bangladesh. Dr.Habib(Dhaka University): "The social issues emerging across Bangladesh indicate the urgency of more of these programs." 

The time is now, we have three options:

1. Go through a government funding process that could be lengthy or complicated

2. Raise funding to run the pilot

3. Enter into this contest to scale and execute the first leap forward toward addressing this challenge. The prize gives us 3-4 years to demonstrate the success of the undertaking at scale, which then allows us the necessary runway to raise grants, government funding etc to see this project self sustain.

In addition to a monetary prize we value the prestige that will undoubtedly accompany the prize, and help Project Rangeet in its future growth and brand standing with educators. 

Furthermore the unlocked networks of support and mentorship as described in the “What can I win if my solution is selected?” section on the website, are on many levels worth more than money. Finally we are interested in a successful roll out which will be enabled by this ecosystem, and will be the fulcrum of our future growth. We are very grateful for your consideration.

Not applicable

During the course of developing Project Rangeet, we have come into contact with a few organizations that we believe will add value to us. 

DOST EDUCATION: won an MIT solve prize. We met them at a conference and we have agreed to run some pilots to test out how we can work together in terms of parent engagement.

INTERNET SAATHI: - Google, Tata Trusts and Digital Empowerment Foundation have partnered to run a program which is trying to move women from digital literacy to digital based economic opportunities. We believe this could be a very interesting partner for Project Rangeet and could offer livelihoods for digitally literate women seeking new opportunities.

Trusts and NGOs like Dost, Internet Saathi, Educate Girls, Nanhi Kali who operate in Bangladesh would be great to partner with to tap into large learning networks. 

We are also fortunate to have a wonderful working relationship with BRAC and a2i and hope to continue this.