Virtual Tutor

Virtual Tutor comprises of face-to-face digital skills training and mobile Apps tutorials that will be used by South Sudanese to increase their employability and effective participation in business. Mobile apps will contain website design, mobile application, database, entrepreneurship, web development, soft skills and Computer applications tutorials. It will be downloaded by users and operated in their mobile phones both online and offline. It is a cross platform mobile application that is compatible to all mobile devices.

As per the report of Trading Economics, South Sudan unemployment rate is 12.3%.Majority of the people who fall in this category are youths who lack digital skills for self-employment. Based on the Conference (March, 2015), ICT penetration, level of uptake of ICT by Government ministries, institutions and parastatals in service delivery, lack of human and technical capacity and the role of ICT in promoting gender equality were the major concerns in the conference conducted by UNESCO. This is due to lack of flexible access to digital skills. This inadequacy in digital skills training leads to incompetency, unemployment and poor service delivery. Unemployment creates redundancy that results in rebellious activities by the youths and adults; these rebellious activities lead to loss of lives, property destruction and economic deterioration in South Sudan. Lack of flexible capacity building constraints youths and adults; especially the youths from developing solutions which can aid in the prosperity of corporate World. Virtual Tutor envisions to provide flexible face-to-face, offline and online learning using mobile applications tutorials so that the people in this category can gain skills for employment, self-employment and competence.

Virtual Tutor comprises of face-to-face digital skills training and mobile Apps tutorials that will be used by South Sudanese to increase their employability and effective participation in business. Mobile apps will contain website design, mobile application, database, entrepreneurship, web development, soft skills and Computer applications tutorials. It will be downloaded by users and operated in their mobile phones both online and offline. It is a cross platform mobile application that is compatible to all mobile devices.

The low level of ICT penetration and digital skills in South Sudan reduces chances of youths' and adults access to digital-oriented skills and jobs. In South Sudan, 73.7% are under the age of 30 years (un.org, accessed on June 8, 2021) and the employment rate in the country is 12.3%(Trading Economics).Majority of the people affected by unemployment are the youths. Some youths employed by the government institutions are getting insufficient payment or delayed payment for close to six months (VOA, FEB 2020) and the ones getting sufficient pay from the business sector or charity organizations lack digital skills to start businesses. The businesses operated by the youths are not performing well because they are lacking enabling technologies to support business growth due to the fact that low levels of digital skills and information communication technology uptake contribute to inadequate workforce which can develop business-oriented solutions. When youths have insufficient salaries as well as insufficient digital skills, it becomes difficult for them to start their businesses and hence digital entrepreneurs reduce. Lack of digital skills among the youths lead to formation of rebellious groups and promotion of criminal activities in the country and hence hinder peace processes in the country. Youths who do not have digital skills are easier to be persuaded and used for political interests by the politicians and this contributes to a demanding humanitarian situation in the country. As a result of inadequate digital skills, the youths and adults are unable to access quality health services due to financial limitations. Virtual Tutor will give the youths; an opportunity and flexibility to learn website design, mobile application development, management systems development, soft skills as well as entrepreneurship skills. When youths are equipped with such skills, they will be able to have skills for employability or self-employment. By focusing on youths' employment through digital skills, they can easily afford basic needs of life and some youths who have advanced their digital skills can employ others. More jobs can easily be created and this will lead to improvement of standard of living of employed youths, reduction in crime rates and improvement of government revenue through tax collection. When youths are enabled with such digital skills, they will be in position to develop enabling technologies for business prosperity; web-site design, database design and many more. The prosperity of business society leads to more employment chances and contribution to growth of domestic product in South Sudan. With Virtual Tutor, the youths can gain digital skills for employability or self-employment and increase uptake of digital skills penetration in South Sudan.

Low levels of uptake of digital skills in South Sudan leads to unemployment among the youths and adults. This is due to the fact that the youths lack digital skills which can enable them to create their own jobs or gain competent digital skills for employment. Virtual Tutor will avail self-learning well-structured Mobile Apps tutorials coupled with face-to-face learning. These tutorials will equip the youths with digital skills required for digital economy in this 21st Century and hence will lead to digital skills penetration in the country.

We have implemented face-to-face digital skills trainings at: Upper Nile University of Juba and Starford International University College where we train students in web system, programming, databases and mobile application development. We have developed management Information system for Virtual Tutor where tutorials will be uploaded for those who will prefer the web. We are eliciting the requirements for mobile application to cater for other beneficiaries who will prefer mobile application. We have elicited the requirements of this solution from Upper Nile University, University of Juba and Starford International University College computer science students. The team continue to refine these requirements and implement the changes as soon as possible. As per now, we have interface for mobile application together with management information system.

Virtual Tutor comprises of both face-to-face tutorials, mobile application tutorials. Mobile application tutorials will have the functionality of offline access; the learners will download the app and begin learning in an offline mode while others with internet accessibility can access the tutorials flexibly. The solution also has flexible web-based management system that will cater for those who prefer desktop and laptop computers. As compared to the current learning of digital skills in South Sudan where people either access them through technical centers at a cost or get them from neighboring countries, Virtual Tutor will be wider accessible even to those who are far from the cities. This makes Virtual Tutor an ideal solution since it does have a geographical limitation in the country. The Virtual Tutor will be the ideal solution for technical learning during COVID-19 pandemic; it comes with less risky learning. Besides, the cost of Virtual Tutor will be spread across many learners and this makes the cost of acquiring technical skills to be friendly and affordable. Among the participants of face-face learning where COVID-19 permits, we aim to impact youths with digital skills and these people will as well trainers others and hence makes Virtual Tutor scalable.

Since 2015 November, we have been training students starting with 60 at Dr.John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology and later was extended to University of Juba and Starford International University College which has led the current student population of 500.With more emphasis on marketing of our solution through radios, churches and other gatherings besides social media, 1,000 people will benefit from our solution in one year. In five years, approximately 5,000 people will benefit from our solution.

Positive feedback, Aboi.L; our student whom we taught physics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology in the coaching we provided in Malek Secondary school in 2011, was thankful after the completion of his BSc in Geology and mining in 2020 and so many whom we taught in secondary joined national and other international institutions. Our foundation has enabled him acquire this quality education and hence in line with Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Increasing demands of trainings among students, there are more needs for youths and adults to consume our services and so, we are preparing for trainings on database and website design to be conducted for one month from June 20, 2021 to July 20 2021.As we impact more people, more people tend to express more needs for such services or even the same people express more needs for advance skills. Our beneficiary, M.Gerald is a competent web-application developer now and hence we have achieved fostering innovation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 2030.

Some of our students who have advanced their digital skills through self-learning have managed to develop websites for organizations, companies and government and hence we have contributed to poverty and hunger reduction of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 2030.

Eng.Thon Malek Garang Ok(Full Time)

Eng.Samwel Chol Buol(Full Time)

Eng.Anthony Taban Joseph(Part Time)

Akuch Leek Alier Leek(Full Time)

Peter Nhial Akech(Part Time)

We have different talented members of our team and their brief background as below:

Eng.Thon Malek Garang

Thon holds BSc Software Engineering and winding up with MSc Mobile Application development. He has rendered consultancy services to charity organizations, government institutions and business society.Thon is currently teaching at Upper Nile University department of computer Science.

Thon started his teaching career in primary and secondary in 2011; teaching Physics and Mathematics in Werkok and Malek Secondary before he advanced for higher education. He been engaged in international seminars on IT project management and social innovation and entrepreneurship from the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology.

Eng.Samwel Cho Buol

He holds BSc Software Engineering and is an expert in web-application, database and mobile application development. Has been developing software applications for National Non-Governmental Organizations in South Sudan.

Eng.Anthony Taban Joseph

Taban holds BSc Computer Science from the University of Juba and he is currently doing teaching assistantship at his Alma mater.Anthony has been developing desktop applications for several years. He help in training desktop applications.

Akuch Leek Alier Leek

She is a third year student of BBA Accounting at Bugema University. Akuch has been working for Global Express and Comrades while accounting for their finances.

Peter Nhial Akech

Peter Nhial holds a diploma in procurement and supply chain management and diploma in Information Technology from Egyptian Academy. He will assist in training entrepreneurship skills as well as aiding in sourcing project equipment.

Our solution aims at involving everyone in South Sudan especially those who are in the our reach to contribute to this problem solving and therefore we treasure gender balance in the team. We believe a good solution comes from ideas of different kinds of people so as to properly solve the problem. For instance, Akuch Leek represent gender in our team and this makes it easier to reach to opinions of female target group.

Our solution is aimed at enabling everyone to gain digital skills irrespective of their backgrounds and so, all our team members have an equal opportunity to contribute to genuine policies, practices and have access to resources to deliver solution to our beneficiaries. All our solution is friendly surrounded by practices coupled with policies and our digital resources to ensure the availability of digital skills for youths and adults to thrive in business, professions and more and this has to involve all team members to achieve this. In our team, we have different tribes participating and hence aiming at targeting ever tribe and region.

While solving the problem at hand, we value and respect everyone’s opinion in the team and this has so far enabled us to have a solution that targets the right group and positioned to meet their demand using ideas of team members and suggestions of well-wishers who are willing to contribute to our solution. For instance, we vote the move in our meeting and the majority votes determine action.

Solve brings different innovators and solution providers across the globe as well as partners who are willing to nature ideas and in some cases provide funding for implementation of technological solutions. With this package, it will help us benefit from mentorship, funding and even getting exposed to to solvers whose testimonials can broaden my view point and may help us customize us solutions to meet technological needs of my country based on their solutions and their experience.

As a team, we are not that competent in business development and so we are in dare need of partners who are in position to assist in modelling this solution and to extend it commercially in South Sudan.

We will appreciate business development coaching and mentorship from partners with experience in business modelling.

MIT faculty or initiatives, or Solve Members.

Our team have been in involved in teaching science; especially; Physics Chemistry, Mathematics and biology for the last 12 years while teaching in high school. Besides, we are currently involved in teaching computer science programming and databases at the higher institutions of learning. This has given us an experience to derive the requirements of this solution from the learners we interact with. We are engaged in the promotion of STEM; through the advancement of basic programming skills at the Universities using weekend programming clubs which we have called Idea Coded Academy. In this Club, we teach students basic of programming as we promote digital skills. We are as well participating in STEM clubs in the East African region where some of our team members; Eng. Thon was appointed as STEM ambassador after the training he attended at the NM-AIST, Arusha, Tanzania. Our team is constantly learning new skills such as the one we got involved recently with CENIT@EA where we learned skills in IT project Management; which can enable us successfully implement this project as we implement this solution. We are equipped with digital skills, Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation training from CENIT@EA. Our learners will learn digital skills as well as the package we received from several trainings across the region. We will promote STEM in Elementary and Primary schools and promote STEM in Eye Radio through weekly presentations. We will train youths and adults digital skills; website design, soft skills, mobile apps development, database design and entrepreneurship skills.