Ed-Talks: 90-Second Lessons

Today, 72.3 million adolescent girls in Africa are facing a learning crisis: Lack of access to quality learning during COVID-19, compounded with existing social norms that de-prioritize girls’ education, have left girls vulnerable.

Our goal through Ed-Talks is to continue the learning process, by equipping youth-serving NGOs, schools, and individuals, with engaging, age-relevant lessons for secondary school girls.

Ed-Talks is a series of 90-second video lectures led by Africans who share topics in their areas of expertise. These follow skills-based learning techniques and emphasize real-world application.

We optimize Ed-Talks for low-bandwidth settings where teachers, parents, and students can share lessons over mobile. Each accompanying lesson guide helps learners thrive.

Memunatu Magazine is a non-profit organization that develops content to empower adolescent girls, reaching thousands across 14 countries in Africa and the diaspora. Through Ed-Talks, we are leveraging community strength, storytelling, and technology to spark positive educational outcomes for girls.

The key challenge we aim to solve is the lack of quality formal and informal learning and training opportunities for adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As outlined in a Population Council report, girls in low and middle-income countries face specific obstacles to attaining positive educational outcomes. These obstacles include poor-quality content and human & social barriers (such as inadequate life-skills education, gender-insensitive curriculum, lack of support for girls education, and pedagogical practices that discourage girls) (Chuang, 2019).

We see that COVID-19 has exacerbated these barriers. Worldwide 1.13 billion students have their education disrupted (World Bank, 2020). Our target audience of 72.3 million adolescent girls in english-speaking Africa now find themselves out of school, unable to transition effectively to remote learning, and at a high risk for negative outcomes (high dropout rates, early pregnancy, lower wages). 

With the population of adolescents in Africa (between 10-19 years old) expected to grow 32% by 2030, addressing this challenge with this target audience immediately will impact families, communities, and an entire generation of African women (UNICEF, 2019).  

Ed-Talks enable adolescent girls, the institutions that serve them, and their communities at large, to effectively overcome the education content barriers limiting girls' learning outcomes. 

Ed-Talks consist of:

1. 90-second video lectures from African leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers that focus on different skills-based topics 
2. Call-to-actions that accompany each Ed-Talk and provide an interactive learning activity for students
3. Lesson guides that equip teachers, parents, and learners with pre and post tools to track progress, and
4. Gamification to engage teachers and students in the learning process.

Currently, schools across the continent are unable to leverage distance learning-- many are in environments with limited infrastructure. As a result, education has effectively halted. 

Ed-Talks are designed to center on bite-sized video content, which thrives in low band-width communities where we have seen mobile access flourish. The lessons can be delivered quickly and effectively with either brief teacher facilitation or entirely student-driven. For each weekly Ed-Talk, we provide the lessons, activities, and main lecture, that can be incorporated into general curricula, enabling students to receive quality content that is (1) skills based, (2) part of a gender-sensitive pedagogy, and (3) ultimately youth-focused. Through this model, learning will continue.

Our target population is secondary school-aged girls in english-speaking Africa and the diaspora. Memunatu’s existing audience for print and digital edtech content spans 14 countries including Ghana, Kenya, and the US. Since our behavior-change communication work started in Sierra Leone and Liberia during the Ebola crisis, we have experience working with adolescents and teachers for social impact. We are leveraging what we’ve learned through these experiences, focus groups, surveys, and other feedback loops to inform Ed-Talks strategy.

Ed-Talks focuses on the educational ecosystem for marginalized students. 

Adolescent girls are our primary end user. Ed-Talks is mobile first and is built with universal design techniques to increase access and encourage social sharing. Further, by connecting students to African leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers that can deliver custom talks, Ed-Talks brings the best of knowledge sharing and storytelling to and with students.

Through Ed-Talks, Memunatu also serves teachers at secondary schools, staff at youth-serving NGOs in Africa, and parents looking for educational content for their students.

Through our pilot this summer, we aim to refine the model for a full launch with a library of 24-weeks of learning and training opportunities for African girls for the school year.

Ed-Talks works to actively increase the number of adolescent girls who participate in learning and training opportunities. Specifically, we innovate on content and delivery for African girls. Mobile sharing utilizes channels most accessible, particularly with geographic spread. Ed-Talks custom content is created by Africans from a variety of backgrounds who both encourage skill-building and serve as role models. Additionally, youth input is Important in Ed-Talks. Students will be able to actively participate and drive content, ensuring our approach is user centered and gender sensitive. This puts us in a position to reach our audience more effectively than other solutions.

I am applying to Solve to amplify impact that Memunatu, through Ed-Talks, is poised to deliver. As an entrepreneur who focuses on gender equality and is part of the African diaspora, I am passionate about home-grown solutions to development challenges. My team and I saw a need in our existing Memunatu audience and have leveraged our networks of Leadership Council members, innovators, educators, and more to make a difference for adolescent girls in Africa and the diaspora. In doing so, we've made progress in developing and testing Ed-Talks. 

The Solve community provides the needed funding and exposure to take these efforts to the next level, matching the need and interest of adolescent girls and the institutions that serve them. Building partnerships within Solve's extended community will be crucial for impact in 2020. Additionally, I hope to both contribute to and learn from the Solvers across the 2020 Global Challenges. 

Our primary partnership goal is to connect with organizations across Africa and the companies/ NGOs that do work there related to empowering adolescent girls. Ed-Talks seeks to collaborate with professionals who can join as speakers and co-creators for these 90-second video lessons as well as well-aligned sponsors who can fund development and dissemination.

Second would be marketing support so that we are reaching as much of the total addressable market as possible.

We have a fantastic Leadership Council comprised of leaders, entrepreneurs, and development specialists, including Her Excellency Dr Joyce Banda, Former President of Malawi. For Ed-Talks specifically, we are looking to grow the tech expertise on our Board and Leadership Council.

We would like to partner with students/ faculty from the MIT Lagatum Center as well as any African experts/professionals that could deliver skills-building lessons.

Through Ed-Talks, Memunatu is improving the quality of life for girls. Girls are at a learning standstill due to infrastructure challenges and teacher limitations. Ed-Talks focuses on innovation in content and deliver to ensure that adolescent girls can continue the learning process. Mobile content as well as age and gender-sensitive approaches help make access to learning possible for many more girls across Africa. Continuing the learning process helps adolescents overcome barriers that would otherwise hamper their long term education, financial, and well-being outcomes.

Ed-Talks and Memunatu Magazine are girl-driven. We believe that all girls should have the opportunity to learn and our initiatives work to catalyze that impact. From ideation to implementation, Ed-Talks are meant to provide 72.3 million adolescent girls in Africa with the tools to ensure that their learning continues.

We will use the prize to incorporate interactive features such as badging for completing lessons, incorporating user-feedback, and for co-creating content with adolescent girls. Ed-Talks is a unique platform for girls to learn and the GM Prize would help realize hat vision for marginalized adolescents.