MIT Solve

Step 2

Our Solution

The Healing Generation

Our solution's stage of development:

Pre-Seed

Our solution:

The Healing Generation seeks to create a better world where the locals are empowered and educated enough to solve their challenges. We will provide young people with education, challenges, mentors, and ideas but they will be required to then go out and use those skills to better their own societies.

Our pitch:

I am an Iraqi-Australian. We came to Australia as refugees in 2003, a few months after the American invasion. In January this year, I went back to Iraq and saw the devastation that war after war had caused. What angered me the most was how disrupted the educational system was. If any country needs competent, skilled young people to ‘fix’ it, it’s Iraq. However, Iraq’s young people were not being educated properly or empowered or positioned to succeed. Due to the destruction of infrastructure, schools catered for thrice the amount of students as before, textbooks were completely outdated and teachers were demotivated.

Ever since my trip, I’ve been speaking to Iraqi street kids, my cousins who still live there, teachers, management-consultants and getting as many opinions as possible on how the issue can be solved. The Healing Generation is the culmination of all those reflections, conversations and focus groups.

The most pressing need identified in Iraqi society is the need to make money. Thus, if we create an online platform which financially rewards young people for learning, then they will engage with it and learn.

The idea is to choose a topic at the start of a fortnight that will be relevant to Iraqi young people and their future (solar-power, coding, artificial-intelligence, Middle-Eastern Politics, famous poets), and then ask the young people to learn the content and produce something original (e.g.video). Everyone who produces a great video will be rewarded financially ($50AUDs/video).

The content will be skewed towards entrepreneurial skills to encourage the young people to start their own projects (e.g. a solar company).

Eventually, it is hoped that the platform will be self-sufficient through selling videos to news networks or through advertising. Secondly, the online platform can then be launched in different countries as we continue.

The problem:

- The worrying state of the Education system in disadvantaged countries

- Disengagement from Education

- Squandering of human potential

- Children spending their lives on the streets

Why our solution will solve the problem:

The outcome we desire is a world in which all young people from all background are engaged, fulfilled and their potential is utilised. The Healing Generation seeks to do this through challenging young people. We will give them tasks, ideas, role-models and mentors and compel them to think and grow. We hope that after learning about innovation, start-ups, technology, coding, their own social and political context and several other topics, these young people will be inspired to go on and start their own projects. They will become the generation which will ‘heal’ Iraq and the whole world.

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Step 3

Step 4

The technologies we employ:

Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
Management & design approaches

Why our solution is unique:

Our solution is unique for many reasons:

Focuses on empowerment of young people and equipping them to shine and thrive
Focus on entrepreneurship rather than waiting for a solution from an authority figure or government. The way forward for disadvantaged countries is through innovation and creativity
Seeks to solve a country’s issues in the next generation
Utilises technology to connect people within the country to each other and to the outside world
Many educational resources don’t exist in Arabic (and some other third world languages), so this solution will produce and share them

Why our solution is human-centered:

One of the core aspects of education is the personal connection which forms between a teacher and a student. For students who are really engaged with The Healing Generation’s work, we will try to connect them with a local or online mentor (this may be when we are more established and have mentors all over the world).

We will endeavour to have an easy to navigate website which will personalise the experience for the young people using it.

We will have editors in Australia who will help students with editing and ensuring that the quality of the videos is acceptable.

How people will access our solution:

Access: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

The smartphone market in Iraq is booming. The mobile phone market itself only launched after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and now the penetration rate is a very high 78% and there are 27 million mobile phone users in the country. Smartphone penetration is lower, but is increasing at a steady pace, MOSTLY amongst the young (Jarrad, GA 2014). From my observations on my trip, most street kids had smartphones. They will be asked to make content/ videos on these smart phones and then share them with us via Google Drive, Dropbox or email.

Technology-Readiness Level:

0 (Concept)

Step 5

Our organization:

Non-Profit

Where we are located:

Australia

How we will sustain our team financially:

We will ask young people to learn content and then produce something out of it. They will be paid for what they create out of their learning and, in turn, we will use what they create to generate further scholarships and revenue for the organisation.

We will try to have several streams of income, depending on the type of work that we receive, and we will try to remain self-sufficient. Some streams of income could include: selling videos to news companies or other outlets; advertising on social media and our website; creating products such as cups and t-shirts; and making effective use of philanthropy and donations as we are a non-profit entity.

The factors limiting our success:

there are a number of factors which can affect our ability to succeed. We will try to identify all of those in the pilot and rectify them prior to scaling internationally. Some issues to consider include:

- Marketing to enough students

- Quality of videos/ content produced by the students may not be of a high-calibre and may not be successful on social media initially (volunteer Australian video-editors can rectify this)

- Young people may stop at the learning step and never go on to become the 'healing generation' and fix the social problems of their society.

How long we have been working on our solution:

Less than 1 year

How long it will take to develop a pilot:

6-12 months

How long it will take to scale beyond our pilot:

6-12 months

Our expected annual budget:

10000

How much of our budget we've secured to date:

2000

Step 6