PICTA- Big Sisters project

Young women and girls in all over Palestine are suffering of lack of chances to get an education and to exchange educational experiences definitely in the last period due to the Coronavirus crisis.

In addition, it is common that girls and young women have psychological barriers that prevent them from participating.

To increase the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training, we are working on creating a communication platform that would enable young women and girls who're seeking to raise their knowledge and to benefit others' educational experiences by enabling them of communicating with competent teachers to answer their inquiries.

This would somehow enable young women to improve their life by having a basic income to buy their own life needs. Scaling it globally, this will reduce poverty among women nationally, which will be reflected globally. 

Due to 2018 statistics, the number of women in all areas of Palestine is 502,268. Women in Palestine are suffering from lack of chances to get education facing lots of social and financial challenges. 24.1% of Palestinian families facing poverty due to 2018 statistics and 29.3% of families need help. Also, 9.3% of heads of family are women. This made providing education for young women and girls a real challenge definitely in the last period due to the Corona pandemic that the whole world is still suffering of. These limits made it hard to get education in the needed quality. The websites and references that universities and schools are providing their students with learning materials are low-qualified. The majority of students in Palestine who're nearly 128,205,4 students are not going to school due to the current Pandemic.

 Trying to solve this problem, the communication platform would enable those students to get all sciences they need in all majors with the ability to answer all their inquiries online by specialists, which was a real challenge for them at schools to ask their teachers for being shy or feeling afraid. This platform would also solve the problem of student density in classes.  

Trying to solve the mentioned problem, we'll be working on creating an  a local communication e-platform that mainly serves both young women and girls in their high school and universities. This platform would include many scientific links to be as references to those students in lots of fields and majors. These scientific links will include theoretical references, videos promoting the practical side to provide deductive learning, and the method of observation for students and tests for measuring their abilities as well.

The methodology will be depending on client to client service, mentors and teachers are clients of the platform who are providing educational service; students are clients to the platform who are requesting service.

When a student of any educational level needs a question, she will put the question online and ask for teachers, in the same time, teachers will receive notification that there is a question online.

The teacher could choose to take the question or not, and the student could choose who the teacher to answer is.

Teachers will provide their services for points depends on the student's evaluation after the session.

These points will be converted to redeemable cash for local shopping. 

This solution mainly targets all young woman and girl students in universities and high schools all over Palestine and its educational institutions in all science majors. Those who're seeking to get more experiences and to develop their scientific abilities without being affected definitely by Corona pandemic, which prevented all students of getting an education in a good scientific quality.

The platform will be provided with e-form for communication with the team, for any suggestions or complains.

In additons, as a part of the registration process, need assessment questions will be posted, to ensure every client among girls and women participate in explaining what they need.

An evaluation form also will be available to evaluate the srvece.

This platform would target all those Palestinian women and girls who didn't get the chance to join colleges or even complete studying their high school for financial or social challenges they've faced.

This solution could be expanded to work globally in the future by providing the services and allow clients from all over the world to participate for the cause of young women- girls learning online.

The Arabic community, especially in the Gaza strip, Palestine is putting women under restrictions and considering them as a low priority in having opportunities.

Either for previous restrictions imposed on women and girls, or the new current conditions of COVID-19 Pandemic, the online solutions are the best match to provide girls and young women with what they need from home.

This educational platform will enable young women and girls to have access to each other and exchange knowledge in the fields they need without being obliged to face abuse by society. 

Big sisters Project application will be the first in the country to serve girls by young women, in the same time generation income through online clicks and number of users using the app, 

we are expecting at least 100,000 users for the application in the launching period, the number will be increasing gradually. 

Most of the local learning websites are providing non-interactive materials, and don't allow students to contact teachers when they need help. 

The solution that we suggest is depending on mobile applications programming that will be easy to use by clients.

Big sister App will work as an e-learning platform in all subjects with added features that allows online direct communication between registered and approved girls as students and young women as mentors in the following steps:

1- students will learn using the online materials that are published in the resources section of the application. 

2- students who would like to ask any questions will send notification in the area of specialization of the question.  (this will require watching relates advertisement).

3-  Teachers in the same learning zone will receive the notification, then they decide to take the question or leave it. 

4- students will pick the teacher responds to the notification according to quick profile information. 

5- After providing the consultation by mentors, basic number of points will be added to the teachers account, these points per session are increasing according to the student's evaluation. 

6- In coordination with private sector organizations, points could be redeemed to cash for shopping. 

This will be the first Application providing this learning service. 

According to PCBS website, more than 70% of the society are using smartphones or internet connected devices.

This will help us promoting the application easily, specially under the current situation of lock-down.

The application is another version of Uber and Careem application that are widely used in the Arabic society.  

The number of Careem users is more than 25 million users in the middle east and north Africa. Which shows how people tend to use available new technologies which is not costly and making their life easier. 

Our team has conducted an online meeting with girls and women talking about their needs in education field.

Most of them refers to lack of interacting with teachers as a main problem that they are facing through the online meeting. 

A meeting with ICT team was conducted to discuss solutions, and we found the big sisters project is a good idea that will benefit a large number depending on the available resources with more added features by the project team. 

As soon as we receive the fund for the proposed application, the programmers will start working on demo application and test it. 

once the application is ready, we will promote it in social media and among different education institutions. 

Video series will be produces to promote the application and teach clients how to use it and invite private sector to be a part of the project. this will increase access of girls and women to the application. 

All learning resources will be available at the application sections, with communication zone related to each field. This will ensure that clients are receiving the needed service. 

The more suggestions we get from clients we receive, the more features we will add to the applications. 

Evaluation form will be added to the application to evaluate our services. 

By the end of project implementation, we expected 100,000 users as clients and a very successful application that is used by clients. 

To ensure private sector participation we will conduct meetings with local companies to support redeemed points to cash for shopping. 

This way we are employing technology in different three fields, education, income generation, and community participation. 

On the long term, we will participate in increasing the number of girls and young women that are having access to education and in the same time improve women lives by income generation. 

We expect that the number of people we are serving will be 50,000 in the as soon as we publish the application. 

By the first year number will increase to more than 100.000 users.

As the application is widely spread over the region, we intend to add features depending on their feedback. 

The expected number of users regionally is more than 1 million users. 

If we are able to make our application international application, we expect at least 10 million users in the middle east and north Africa. 

Our goal for this year is to provide the urgent educational support needed for students during the lock-down. 

we are aiming at having integrated online learning environment that enable learning for all levels according to the following:

Digitizing the learning curriculum in interactive learning environment using games and other tools. This will help in providing the learning curriculum interactively, and interestingly that attracts children to learn and will ease the learning process. 
Mentors and teachers capacity building by producing an online series of online learning methods and tools to fill the gap in mentors skills that are needed for online teaching. 

Launching Educational platform website and application, which will be the online learning interactive environment that mentors and students could meet together when needed. 

Moving from local to global targets and make our online interactive learning environment popular among users everywhere. 

The main barrier is lack of funding, we will try to follow up available calls for proposals to solve this barrier. 

In term of promoting the application, all people are tend to move to technology in their life, so with some efforts the application will be promoted widely.

Keeping the application working is also a main concern, to maintain the running costs of the application, and working team. 

The main barrier is lack of funding, we will try to follow up available calls for proposals to solve this barrier. 

In term of promoting the application, all people are tend to move to technology in their life, so with some efforts the application will be promoted widely.

Keeping the application working is also a main concern, to maintain the running costs of the application, and working team.

We will seek private sectors sponsorship, and will use relevant advertisement services to generate income to the application. 

4 team members are working on the solution project. all of them will work full time in design and programming. 

1 team member will work part time for evaluation and solution improvement.  

I've been work in educational projects since 10 years, and have computer education background which is related to the field of solution. 

The other team members have wide experience in business solutions programming and improvement. 

They have implemented different online solutions including online incubators and accelerators, e-learning, Living E-Work. 

Big sisters Project application will be the first in the country to serve girls by young women, in the same time generation income through online clicks and number of users using the app, 

Big sister App will work as an e-learning platform in all subjects with added features that allows online direct communication between registered and approved girls as students and young women as mentors in the following steps:

1- students will learn using the online materials that are published in the resources section of the application. 

2- students who would like to ask any questions will send notification in the area of specialization of the question.  (this will require watching relates advertisement).

3-  Teachers in the same learning zone will receive the notification, then they decide to take the question or leave it. 

4- students will pick the teacher responds to the notification according to quick profile information. 

5- After providing the consultation by mentors, basic number of points will be added to the teachers account, these points per session are increasing according to the student's evaluation. 

6- In coordination with private sector organizations, points could be redeemed to cash for shopping. 

Girls and young women will be able to over come the time and place limits that they are suffering from in the lock-down. 

In addition, they will be able to fill the gap between different generations, and will over come the psychological barriers and the individual learning differences. 

We will impose subscription fee for mentors which is not so high that almost everyone can pay. 

We will also add relevant advertisement to the application users that they should click to access the learning zone. 

Also we will seek private sector sponsorship which will not be so high but will help a lot in maintaining financial sustainability. 

In addition we will keep seeking funding for any improvement or added features.