Stars Within Reach

Stars Within Reach is a global initiative that provides a high-quality, free of cost education to girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community by connecting them to stay-at-home mothers and professionals through an intuitive mobile application. These mothers can relate to these girls making them comfortable in their learning environment and by bridging the language gaps. One of the largest problems that young girls face in developing nations is that they do not have access to education because of social and traditional ideals. Our solution is composed of a mobile application, the creation of digital classrooms in rural and underprivileged areas, as well as the sourcing of supply packs (resources and materials) for these young girls. If scaled globally, this solution would force young girls out of their labor and house-hold work to pursue various opportunities to better their lives and the lives of their families.

Education is a life-determining component which drives the framework for one's future. However, for some young girls, a lack of education has caused their future to be predetermined, in a negative and stagnant trajectory. It starts with the fact that just 39 percent of rural girls attend secondary school. Women make up over two-thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate people. Lack of education leads to many other challenges that young girls simply can't overcome. Less than 20 percent of the world's landholders are women and 1 in 5 girls are married before the adult age of 18.

There is a systemic problem facing the world, young girls don’t have access to a future with dignity and self-expression. Extreme poverty, malnutrition, sexual, and physical abuse create an underclass that is without hope. In many cases, this can lead to suicide and there is a 17.4% suicide rate for girls in developing countries. Suicide is the #1 cause of death globally among older adolescent girls and we need a solution.

We, at Stars Within Reach, are using space as a magnet to inspire young girls and give them hope.

Stars Within Reach is composed of three main aspects, that when combined will provide a better life for millions of girls across the developing world. The main part of our solution is the mobile application that connects mothers and professionals to these girls which inspires them to take on new projects and learn. We connect these people based on the languages they speak, their interests as well as other similarities making it as comfortable for these girls to learn. Another major part of our solution is the creation of digital classrooms, which is a learning environment where these students can get together and take on new challenges. These classrooms would have computers, resources and other materials that would simulate a school, and they would use our platform to connect with other teachers and professionals for the best learning experiences. Lastly, we are selling supply packs to fund our project and get resources for these children. These packs contain tablets, books, stationery and other items that would help these girls learn and they can be purchased on our website. All the profit would be reinvested into these digital classrooms and the promotion of our application, making our solution cohesive and effective. 

While many people have educational-specific solutions focusing on just underprivileged girls, our scope and horizon goes far above. Our solution not only helps these girls who do not have an equal access to education, but also provides mothers and professionals a platform where they can support these girls. This solution will have a large impact on their lives because it gives them a pillar of support; opportunity and hope. Our target audience are the girls who do not have access to equal education in various developing nations. We are providing a solution that removes many of the barriers and we did this by researching the demographics of these girls, their interest and traits as well as who they would relate to the most. Hence, our solution revolves around connecting girls to mothers, because nothing can replace a mother’s love for a child. Our application then uses a tagging feature that connects girls and mothers with similar qualities and the application is available in various other languages. However, after extensive research, we realized that many girls don’t have technology, or that they are illiterate which is why we want to set up digital classrooms using our platform to teach these children.

With our platform and app, SWR is offering a safe space and freedom to explore, SWR encourages young girls and the LGBTQ community to learn. Girls can participate in discussions and can create what they dream of creating. They can pursue these dreams and follow the paths that they want to follow. Through the Harkness Method, we allow a problem to be thrown into the middle of the room and allow groups to work together. Our solution serves the young girls in developing countries that don’t have access to an education and we are helping them grow their talents. 

SWR has built a never before bridge for young women and the LGBTQ community, connecting dreams and opening up pathways of equal access for those who are faced with difficulties such as poverty and discrimination. We are a platform where our members can connect with each other all through the prism of journeying through space. While we are connecting our community to the future, we are also connecting them to each other, helping them develop friendships and overcome adversity! 

Our members can connect with others, who are facing similar problems, but are on the other side of the world. They can work together to solve the problems that they face. We connect mothers, who have previously been unable to connect with these girls, a way to support, and collaborate with these girls. We are building a support system where no member gets left behind and where no problem goes unsolved.

 We have created a tagging feature that allows members that have similar attributes to connect with each other. We aim to create a community that is barrier-less, open and free. We create “groups” with girls that have similar interests making it easier to share learning experiences with one another.

Sometimes education narrows students and they become focused on answering pre-set questions, instead of thinking about how to make something better. SWR is about doing things in a different, creative way and we are using this method to create a bridge between young people, and between planets. 

The core technology of our solution revolves around a mobile application that is free and available for all types of systems. The app is composed of various features that enhance the interconnectedness and comfort of all members registered on it. Our app consists of many different features.

First, we allow members to create posts that can be viewed by the whole community sparking communication and the sharing of learning. We allow members to share their problems and allow others to step in and help.

Second, mothers and professionals can create groups and this allows for girls and the LGBTQ+ community to come and talk about their experiences. Groups are made by the choice of members, but our application has a “tagging” feature which automatically recommends other people with similar attributes. This includes languages, hobbies, interests, and skillsets which makes the education more personalized and comfortable. We build a support system from the ground up that not only solves problems but also helps form long-lasting friendships.

Third, our projects page allows anyone to start a project about a specific issue or topic and allows for collaboration between the community. Our community has professionals from all areas where we allow for Harkness-style group discussions. Lastly, members and users can communicate with one another through the chat page, where they can select a third-party platform to talk to each other (ranges from google meet, hangouts, or zoom), thus, making it effective with the use of technology. 

Our mission aims to provide the best experience for all members on the platform while maintaining uniqueness and personalization. Hence, our mobile application uses a variety of technologies that are both open source and programmed by our team. We use open-source, third-party software for the communicational aspects of this application with platforms such as google meet, zoom, and hangouts to connect various groups together regardless of their location. We tested for latency, screen-sharing/presenting options as well as the intuitiveness of all these different software and found the ones mentioned to fulfill those needs. We chose to eliminate other software such as Skype and WebEx, simply because they were too complex or had other technical issues. 

However, the majority of the aspects of the application were actually created and programmed by our team. The website is live at https://thestarswithinreach.org where members can browse through blogs, ask questions, and share posts. They can also see a live demonstration of the app on the preview page, and the website was created using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. On the other hand, the application uses react-native and firebase to track user input and this makes the backbone of the platform. We ran various tests on different computers and phones to ensure the responsiveness and smoothness of the app itself. 

Our communications page which uses third party software in order to connect groups.

At Stars Within Reach, we live by one word. Hope. Our solution aims to provide hope to the people who might not have any hope, to the people that are looking down instead of up. We support each other, we build off each other, we are a tight-knit community and we stand together. 

One commonality that the SWR team has is that each of us moved from a developing country, India. Seeing the inequality and unfairness from early on inspired all of us to give back to the community and try our best to provide an equal education for children. Driving down the streets of Delhi, it is sad to see so many children playing around with tires and sticks when they can invent concepts that will change the future. We believe that SWR can give a voice to these loud children all across the world, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or gender. We expect our solution to work because it provides a free of cost education, a communicational platform, and a chance to talk with real professionals. 

By connecting mothers with children who speak the same language, not only are we providing a place for these kids to learn, but are also allowing them to learn comfortably and with personalization. We believe that there is nothing more consoling than to talk to mothers from your heart, and that is something we are trying to accomplish through our solution.

Another major component of our impact is how SWR is going to grow and develop. We already have investors from Italy, the Mars Planet Organization that are promoting and investing in our application, creating regional groups in Italy, and helping spread the word. We have reached out to professors at MIT to inspire and motivate members of our solution by participating in various discussions. We are a platform that employs a new style of learning, we focus on creativity instead of fixed structured learning.

One of the main objectives that we have for our solution is to make it available to different groups of people fitting their needs. If people want to support our mission, they can purchase supply packs and invest in digital classrooms (funding for our project). If mothers want to volunteer, if girls want to learn and if professionals want to give more insight, they can connect through our application. However, the primary stages of our organization limited us to connect with fewer people, as we were setting up the application and solution as a whole. Professionals are just starting to be reached out to in order for them to start a group. Currently, we are in contact with 20-25 stay-at-home mothers in our local communities, various board members of non-profit organizations around the world, different groups throughout Europe, various professors from MIT, and Princeton as well as one organization itself. In one year, we plan to promote our solution heavily and our target number for the girls that can use our application is over 20,000 girls (2020). We also plan to get more organizations and partners interested in our solution; we are aiming to connect with 4-5 organizations by the end of this year. We also want to reach out to more stay-at-home mothers and professionals, over 500 to be precise. In 5 years, we plan to reach out to over 200,000 girls, 30-35 organizations, and 10,000 professionals and mothers throughout the world.

The main mission of Stars Within Reach is to provide a high-quality, free of cost education to these girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community through our application that connects them to mothers and professionals, by creating digital classrooms and investing in resources that will better their future. Our goal within the next year is simple and straightforward, to get over 20,000 girls involved with our application and solution. This number may seem large at a first glance but there are over 130 million girls throughout the world that do not have access to education. We want to undo this dent that social standards and unjust ideals have created by expanding to various girls all over the world. We also plan to raise over $50,000 for this year in support of our mission, to invest in digital classrooms and resources where these girls can truly simulate an enhanced learning environment. Within the next 5 years, we have similar goals but plan to continue and grow exponentially. A major difference between our short-term and long-term goals is the fact that we eventually want to partner with other non-profit organizations to make our solution reach new heights. We want our platform to be instituted in various community-service based schools and be used in various digital classroom settings. Another major goal that we have is to partner with several organizations and try our best to financially incentivize families to let their girls have equal access to education.

One of the main barriers that we are facing is providing the resources needed to connect young girls to our platform. Our solution aims to target those in developing countries and there is a lack of access to resources in those developing countries. These resources include technology, Wi-Fi, books, and even simple materials such as pencils and paper. Furthermore, a major issue that arises when creating an international initiative such as this one is proper financial independence and funding. As a young organization, we did not see the need for much funding when we started out, but as we continue to grow and develop, monetary support is needed to jump-start our endeavors and projects. The barrier for funding stems from a lack of initial credibility and exposure to all people. We realize that early-stage organizations may not look mature in the eyes of other people and that initially, fewer people would tend to support our mission. Marketing and publicity have also been a barrier for us when it comes to contacting other professionals and making our social media accounts grow larger. Lastly, a barrier when it comes to education itself is incentivizing developing nations’ parents to let their girls learn and enjoy. A major problem in these countries is that girls and other LGBTQ+ children are not allowed to have access to proper education and are forced into doing labor or household chores. We can overcome these barriers through proper planning as well as support from various partners.

The first barrier we face is providing the necessary resources and funding. The main solution for this is the distribution of supply packs to girls that need them. These supply packs would include laptops, books, paper, and other basic materials. We plan on raising money for these supply packs through our website where we will allow people to buy supply packs for someone in need. We will share the story of the person in need so we can build a personalized connection. We will partner with various organizations to distribute the supply packs to the young girls that need them most.

In order to keep all users engaged, we will be constantly making new content, coming out with new projects and most importantly, we will allow SWR students to choose projects that they want to do. They will be more engaged in something that they have selected. Additionally, discussion groups will be organized into different age ranges so the content available to them will be appropriate.

In order to overcome social barriers in developing countries, we will partner with nonprofit organizations. For example, a common belief in some developing nations is that girls should not be educated. In order to combat this, we will partner with organizations that promote learning in those areas. They would help us by sending out volunteers to modernize their approach to girls and learning. Some of these organizations include Build Africa, Books for Africa, and CamFed.

Currently, there are three main members to our team. Aarush and Ashmit are the Co-CEOs of Stars Within Reach, and Ananya is the director of Public Relations for our team. We are also working with Mr. Antonio Del Mastro and Laura Sopegno from the Mars Planet Organization to start up regional groups in Italy. Furthermore, we have connected with professors and lab members from MIT, like Mr. Steven Barrett. Lastly, we have the support from our local community and mothers for this project. These people are the pillars of Stars Within Reach and drive this platform from the grassroots.

The idea of Stars Within Reach came across to us as a group in February of 2020. We have been working on this project ever since that day by creating a website, application, various videos, and contacting numerous people to help support our project. In total, it has been 4-5 months that we have been working on our solution together as a team. 

All of the members on our team have been to India at some point in their lives. We all got exposure to the inequality present for many of the children back in Indian villages and rural towns as they did not have access to education or basic necessities. As a team, we are well-positioned to deliver this solution because of our experiences, social and communicative skills as well as the fact that we ourselves are young. Since the topic is education and helping these young children, we feel that we would connect and relate more with these young girls and would be able to better cater to their needs. 

Furthermore, we part-take in other activities revolving around equal access to education such as various non-profit organizations (Apollo Foundation, Girl Scouts) that give us perspective on the best way to tackle this problem. As a team, we are extremely outgoing and determined which shows our ability to take charge in a situation and deliver a solution to the best of our potential. Lastly, we are open-minded and enthusiastic to learn about truly making this solution globally successful.

As iterated in other questions, we are a relatively young organization and did not get many opportunities to present our mission to potential partners. However, through extensive contact and communications, we have reached out and partnered with a few professionals and an organization as well. Currently, SWR is working with the Mars Planet Organization to promote Stars Within Reach, increase knowledge about space and STEM, and to increase awareness amongst young girls in Europe about the problems that young girls in developing countries face. We have specifically connected with two key members of the Mars Planet Organization, Mr. Antonio Del Mastro, and Ms. Laura Sopegno. Mr. Antonio Del Mastro is the head of the organization and Ms. Laura Sopegno is an Aerospace Engineer and will lead our first girls group. We have worked with Mr. Mastro and Ms. Sopegno to develop topics for our discussion groups and to create various projects, such as “make a message that you would want an alien to see”. They are graciously providing us publicity and funding starting in the month of July 2020. This will be used to make the app more widespread, especially in Europe itself. Furthermore, we have also partnered with some members and professors of the Aeronautics and Astronautics division at MIT. Mr. Steven Barrett is the director of the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment and we reached out to him as someone that can dive into various topics for these girls to explore, making him another key partner.

Our business model is to create a platform that connects stay-at-home mothers to young girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community and encourages professionals to inspire and motivate these students as well. This program provides a more personalized and comfortable education to these students who do not have equal access to education. As for the stay-at-home mothers, this application provides opportunities where they can give back to the community and truly uplift these young students. The young girls and children from the LGBTQ+ community would be both our customers as well as the beneficiaries as the app provides free education for all that register, creating an enhanced learning community. Our business model divides the solution into three main categories; the application, digital classrooms, and supply packs. While the mobile application is the backbone of connecting these members together, the funding and resources we get from our partners are directed towards these main facets. After raising some funds, we plan to set up digital classrooms in various rural areas that may not have access to technology. These classrooms do not require a teacher, but simply a place where students can use a computer and connect with other professionals and mothers from all around the world. Lastly, the supply packs are a concept where people can purchase a bundle of resources such as computers and books for underprivileged students, and the profit made off this would be reinvested towards setting up more classrooms and helping the maximum number of people possible.

Our mission at SWR is to support the maximum number of people possible through our solution, which stems from being financially sustainable. Our revenue model uses a combination of social enterprise business models and other factors which is the main source of funding for our solution. As mentioned in other places, partners and other organizations would ideally provide us with monetary support to fund our endeavors and this falls under an integrated social enterprise model, where a funding mechanism is supported in this organization to complete the overall objective of providing education to these students. This can be achieved by getting an organizational status such as 501(c)(3), which is a non-profit status that makes an organization tax-exempt. This would not only help attract more people to donate for our cause, but also captivate sponsors to help support our mission, due to this status itself. However, we don’t only want to rely on the help our local, regional, and global communities can provide us. We also want to create a digital marketplace, where people can purchase supply packs. These packs encompass core resources that are needed for a more comfortable and streamlined education. This includes materials such as computers, tablets, stationery, and books. These packs also come in various sizes which provides more diversity for other consumers to choose from. By charging a fixed amount on top of the cost of these packs, some profit can be generated from this model, and this can be reinvested into digital classrooms.

Solve is one of the most unique competitions and programs as it provides new ideas and solutions not just with funding, but connects them to professionals and partners that can help an organization’s future tremendously. We are applying to solve for three main reasons. Firstly, Solve has over $25 million in funding and even a portion of that amount would kickstart our organization’s mission and that monetary support can be invested into digital classrooms (helpful during COVID-19). This funding would also help us overcome the barrier of digital marketing and reaching out to a larger audience, and it also helps the costs with both the supply packs and digital classroom set-up. Furthermore, MIT Solve has various organizations and professionals partnered with it, so if our solution is selected, we would be able to talk to these inspiring people, gain guidance on various topics in our solution from legalities to marketing and also become more credible as a whole. Partners that are organizations can also help support our cause in a monetary manner, where they can provide financial support and offset the costs of our solution. Lastly, MIT Solve will expose our team to a greater number of partners and professionals so by having their experience, it makes our solution more credible and appealing to other audiences. Many people are hesitant to support entry-level organizations but with MIT Solve being the backbone of our project, it would make it easier to reach out to different supporters and sponsors as a whole.

As high school students, we would ideally want partners who have expertise in managing funds, promoting an organization, and also providing various tips to grow our platform. The experience that these large companies have is something that is truly invaluable in terms of both marketing and sustainability. We would love to be mentored by the best of people to help make our platform expand internationally. One of the core reasons that we need partners is for their publicity and ability to guide us in the digital marketing process as we want this application and solution to reach new boundaries all across the globe. Lastly, a major component of our solution outside of this competition and funding scope is creating digital classrooms and providing resources (supply packs) for these young children. These partners can illustrate the process of creating an online market and explain all of the legal technicalities behind that. 

As our solution relies on building a community of professionals, young students and organizations, we look to partner with many organizations and professionals. We have already partnered with Mr. Barrett from the MIT Aerospace department and are constantly looking to partner with others such as Mr. Barrett. We seek professionals that will start their own discussion groups and create content for the girls to learn from. We seek to collaborate with professionals such as astronauts Dr. Ellen Ochoa and Dr. Cady Coleman. Speakers like these would hold live video conferences and talks with the young girls to both inspire them to achieve their dreams and teach them about their line of work. In developing areas such as India and Africa where education for girls is looked down upon, non-profit organizations such as the Akansha foundation, would be useful for overcoming social and cultural barriers. We look to other organizations to help us distribute the needed resources to access our platform and to promote our app. We are looking to collaborate with MIT’s Legatum Center to host our very own entrepreneurship competition and use their platform to come up with solutions to the problems that our SWR community members face. Finally, we are looking to connect with past education-related Solver organizations such as Livox, Practical Education Network, StoryWeaver, and Century Tech. These organizations will help us jump over the barriers that hold us back. 

Stars Within Reach is founded on communication-based technology to connect members from all across the world via one mobile application. We believe that we perfectly embody the description of this prize as we are using technology to better the lives of these girls who suffer from inequality in the field of education. This includes designing our own mobile application using various programming languages such as React Native, Javascript and other libraries. We also created our own website using HTML, CSS and Javascript to demonstrate the application and to showcase our solution to a wide variety of people. Not only do we use this technology for the betterment of education and connecting these members, but we also have projects that are focused on STEM and other modern fields. This ranges from programming small robots as a team, to exploring aviation and aeronautics with professors at MIT; these projects for these girls all have a backbone of technology and that sector as a whole. All these aspects combined, women’s and girls’ voices can be echoed throughout the world as they have a platform where they can learn, develop and share. We would love to be considered for this honorable prize as it not only provides extensive funding for our solution but would also help with credibility and publicity. This grant would act as a stepping-stone to help fund all of our projects, and it would also portray our organization as accountable and reliable for the future of these girls.

The GM Prize has been one of the driving factors of Stars Within Reach as it replicates our goals for the future. We want to provide equal learning opportunities to underprivileged girls throughout the world that focus on creative projects and STEM-related activities. We believe that the GM Prize is looking for just that; a solution that allows for girls to dive deeper into the core-concepts of STEM and a platform that allows for girls to be creative and innovative. For us, the GM Prize is unique because we get an opportunity to talk to engineers and discuss more about our solution. A major component of the mobile application is the group discussions and inspiration we aim to provide these girls by allowing them to talk to various professionals. The GM engineers would be a perfect role-model for these students who do not even have the chance to meet people such as them. Furthermore, with General Motors, we can discuss the scaling of our solution to be international as they would have various connections that would make our application more widespread. GM would also make our solution more credible as the company is renowned throughout the world. A recent project that this company took up was creating videos to inspire future EV leaders. We would love to showcase short clips such as these on our application and website as that itself is truly motivational for these young girls; propelling our solution for the betterment of tomorrow.