ThinkZone

For developing countries, the digital divide and disruption in learning could have adverse long-term consequences for millions of children, and these are likely to be most severe for the disadvantaged communities. ThinkZone is tackling this problem by providing education access to early-grade learners by using non-internet-based technology. 

Our home-based learning program uses remote instructions by voice and text messages to engage children aged 3-10 years in activity-based learning content. The solution supports parents to work towards developing the foundational skills of their children by spending few minutes in a day.

The home-based learning program uses AI/ML to identify the learning levels of children over the basic phone and then provides personalized structured content in language and arithmetic. The user-friendly DIY learning modules can be understood and implemented by parents regardless of their literacy level.

The solution works towards developing a positive parent-child relationship which will lead to improved learning outcomes. 

Along with the obvious health risks, the pandemic has also led to substantial loss of schooling. School closures due to the pandemic have affected more than 320 million students across India (UNESCO, 2020).While educational institutions have largely shifted classes online, only 8.1% of enrolled children in government schools are using the internet, online classes, and digital mediums to connect (ASER 2020). 

The estimated loss of lifelong learning for Indian students has been substantial during the pandemic (World Bank, 2020). The pandemic has exposed a massive digital divide within India’s education system since most of the interventions involve the internet & smartphones both of which, unfortunately, is out of reach for the majority of the population. In this pandemic situation, the role of parents has increased even more. On average, consistent parental engagement helps children achieve about four additional months’ progress in a year (EEF, 2019).

For developing countries, the digital learning divide could have adverse long-term consequences, and are likely to be most severe for disadvantaged communities. This brings into focus the role of low-tech alternatives and parents’ role in making sure their children get access to learning. 

The home-based learning program supports families with activity-based learning content through remote instructions via feature phones. The program uses audio and text messages to provide interactive DIY learning modules to ensure that parents and children find it fun and engaging. 

During the course of the program, children are provided with content after their learning levels are identified using automated AI/ML-based audio tools. This helps us to provide personalized learning content based on the needs of the children. Apart from automated instructions, the program contains live phone calls from trained educators/teachers who provide a walkthrough of these learning activities. These calls average 15-20 minutes in length and provide a direct walkthrough of the learning activities sent via text message and calls. The solution also incorporates offline-based mobile app solutions which are used by teachers to track the progress of families/students assigned to them. It also helps them to tweak their call responses based on feedback from parents.

Access to the content is free of cost for families. The content is directly mapped to the learning outcomes prescribed by the government. It enables parents to work towards developing the language and arithmetic skills of their children.

Children living in poor communities start out with low-quality learning opportunities which leads to them having limited educational foundations. Imagine being asked to read long paragraphs and tested on them without ever getting the chance to learn the alphabet; or having to solve mathematical equations, without knowing numbers. That is the struggle of 50 million children in India who are in primary grades and have yet to attain basic mastery of literacy and numeracy (Source: National Education Policy, India – 2020). This problem has been compounded with school closures due to the pandemic, where millions of children who don't have access to online modes of learning fall behind in their education. 

Our solution was developed and implemented as a direct response to the pandemic after seeing that communities/children are devoid of learning opportunities as they don't have access to internet or digital devices! Our initial research also found that the penetration rate of feature phones in the hinterlands was substantial. 

We truly believe that we need to go back to the basics to solve this problem of accessibility of education. The solution should work now, during the global pandemic but also yield a long-term impact that will uplift the overall quality of education in India. These issues call for the adoption of immediate and newer techniques using available resources that fully respect the problems faced by millions of students that still have no access to the internet, and are facing the threat of being left behind in this learning journey. ThinkZone's 'Home-based Learning Program' was born out of such a desire to help students of low-income communities in India to find access to education during the global pandemic. 

The solution will positively impact children from low-income families who don’t have access to smartphones and internet services. This digital divide is stark and this has come into the picture especially during the pandemic. The solution will work to ensure that children who have fallen several learning steps behind due to the pandemic receive adequate learning support.

Our solution enables access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings and supports parents to work towards developing the foundational skills of their children. The solution also up-skills school teachers for providing support to families for at-home learning.

ThinkZone is currently impacting 10000+ children using the solution over the past 12 months. We have been partnering with the state government of Odisha, India to implement our solution and are now expanding the program along with them to reach an additional 10000 children from July onward.  

Evaluations of our solution show more than 20% of learning gains in arithmetic and language scores. Independent RCT evaluation is also being conducted by leading academic researchers, results of which would be used by the government to expand the solution across the state.

We are also looking at adding multiple features to our solutions based on our learnings. We are also looking to integrate school teachers into our solutions from this year which is going to cost-effective and scalable. 

Our solution is one of the few interventions providing localized tech-based pedagogy and targeting first-generation learners in socio-economically disadvantaged households. For children who have got disconnected from formal schooling due to the pandemic, the program imparts skills like literacy, numeracy, engaging in learning activities, reading and writing in mother-tongue, etc.

Our solution is implementing learner-centric, cost-effective, and low-tech solutions at <$1 per month per child. We have partnered with the government to implement our solution from last year. This partnership and the systematic implementation and documentation will help curate a body of evidence that will help the government immensely in deciding whether to deploy low-tech solutions at scale to promote equity and inclusion of children from low-income, under-resourced communities. 

Digital and smartphone-based solutions have been implemented across the globe to either directly reach out to children or support teachers & parents. Low-tech solutions have been rarely deployed by the government at the policy level for effective parent-teacher-student engagement. Our solution pitches for such a solution to work at scale especially when the pandemic had thrown a brutal spotlight on the education system that is so dependent upon internet-enabled digital devices.

ThinkZone is currently impacting 10000+ families/children and 600+ educators/teachers as of May 2021. 

This financial year, we are on the path to directly impact 22000+ families/children and 1500+ educators/teachers in the state of Odisha, India.

ThinkZone is looking to positively impact the learning outcomes of 1 million children in the next 5 years and also up-skill 100 thousand educators. This will be achieved by formally partnering with multiple state governments of India and along with large NGOs and international foundations.

1. Percentage increase in language scores

2. Percentage increase in arithmetic scores

3. Percentage increase in no. of parents who are actively participating and supporting children's learning at home

4. Percentage of children developing age-appropriate skills

5. No of children who are directly enrolled in our solution and regularly accessing the same

18 full-time staff

9 part-time staff

Our organization aspires to create and expand opportunities in areas that have little access to quality resources. The leadership team has a combined work experience of 35+ years in education, technology, skill development, and business development. We also have rich expertise in developing and implementing ed-tech and ICT4D products at the bottom of the pyramid. Bootstrapping from the beginning, pivoting with our model along making a lot of mistakes in our entrepreneurial journey have helped the team learn a lot about implementing cost-effective solutions that can be scaled.

The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. Providing a good foundation through quality early-grade education is our team's passion. We all dream that every child in India not just goes to school but actually has the minimum learning competencies to succeed in life. 

Our team all belong from low-income group states, which unfortunately have one of the worst human development indexes. Our thinking of what we want to do in life has been affected by our first-hand experiences of the massive societal inequality happening around us. Our senior management team consisting of both male and female leads are from humble backgrounds and have overcome challenges and been able to move ahead because of getting access to education using digital tools. This experience of ours helped the team relate to the challenges faced by the communities.

Some points we want to highlight about ThinkZone:-

1. We have never thought of ourselves as being the torchbearer of women's empowerment. That we think is the first step towards building an inclusive leadership team. 

2. We have broken the stereotypes of the job roles that women can't do. That is the step towards embodying the value of equity. ThinkZone has never segregated work that 'this is the role of a man and this is of a woman'. As an example, we have both male and female team members working in operations(something which is considered a male-only job, considering there is travel required for the work)

3. Another stereotype that ThinkZone has broken is that 'after marriage, the woman can't give time to her career, especially in rural India. We have female team members who are married, have families, and successfully continuing with their careers.

4. 67% of board members are female

5. 70% of the team members are female

6. We don't discriminate against someone on the basis of formal education degrees while hiring and look into skills. 

7. We don't discriminate based on communities and background(urban, rural, etc). In fact we strongly advocate and implement a community-level approach (‘vocal for local’ approach) i.e. we identify, train, and continuously support local change-makers who become an important part of our core ThinkZone team. We are proud to say that 50% of our core team members are from local communities.

8.We are an equal employment opportunity employer. 

'Solve' will help us get connected to fellow stakeholders who are striving to build a sustainable society. It will also provide us with a structured opportunity to be exposed to the challenges involved in scaling up enterprises. 

We really want to a part of this platform where knowledge can be shared towards building a more inclusive ecosystem for sustainable social impact startups. 

'Solve' will also give our enterprise a chance to meet with established sector experts who can guide us in taking ThinkZone to the next level. Apart from this, the networking opportunities will help us build partnerships, which will ultimately help us in accelerating our work thereby multiplying our organization's social impact on the ground.

ThinkZone would want to partner with organizations that could support us to further our inclusive technology innovation in under-resourced communities.

The partnerships/support ranges from mentorship and funding support to enhance our technology as well as support in marketing and communications so that we are able to reach out to a larger audience.

Apart from that ThinkZone would like to get support in terms of implementing our on-ground model(service distribution) in an effective manner by forging out partnerships.

As we scale our model we also want to have an independent 3rd party evaluation of our work from leading experts.

Some of the organizations that we would like to partner with are:

1. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

2. The Rockefeller Foundation

3. Dell

4. Google.org

5. US Aid - DIV

6. Children's Investment Fund Foundation - CIFF

7. Michal and Susan Dell Foundation

8. MIT Solve Team, Faculty and the overall MIT’s innovation ecosystem (For Knowledge Support)

These organizations apart from financial support can also help ThinkZone tap into their existing networks of partners and other like-minded organizations.

ThinkZone uses AI/ML to reach to provide access to quality learning opportunities to children with no access to the internet and digital devices. We will be utilizing the prize amount to enhance the existing product by building high-quality automated assessment tools using machine learning techniques and also develop tools using machine learning to get user insights.

ThinkZone uses AI/ML to reach to provide access to quality learning opportunities to children with no access to the internet and digital devices. We will be utilizing the prize amount to enhance the existing product by building high-quality automated assessment tools using machine learning techniques and also develop tools using machine learning to get user insights.