MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

School the World

One-line solution summary:

Equipping children in rural poverty with the digital tools needed to stay engaged, in school and learning throughout the pandemic.

Pitch your solution.

The objective of Project Equity is to mitigate the learning losses caused by school closures and ameliorate the inequitable impact of distance learning as the primary solution in the context of a vast digital divide.

Project Equity is a multi-pronged approach using low-tech and high-tech to reach students, teachers and parents. It equips children living in rural poverty with the distance learning resources needed to stay engaged during pandemic school closures. In concert with the introduction of distance and digital learning into these communities, the project trains teachers to assess learning loss and teach remotely. The project provides a virtual support system to lower secondary school students, empowers unschooled parents to support their child’s education at home, and more!

If scaled globally, Project Equity could prevent the erasure of a decade of progress in education by avoiding record numbers of school drop-outs amongst the world’s poorest children.

Film your elevator pitch.

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What specific problem are you solving?

Pre-pandemic, 258 million children were out of school and in low-middle income countries, more than 50% of children could not read by age 10 (WorldBank). Add another 1.6 billion children out of school due to COVID-19. The education crisis is urgent.

Globally, schools providing education to more than 168 million children have been closed for over a year (UNICEF). Children in Latin America and the Caribbean have lost four times more schooling compared to the rest of the world, and it is estimated that 3 million of these children may drop-out permanently (UNICEF).

Out of those not in school and not learning, there is no internet, they do not have access to any technology. Our solution is to leverage low-tech such as inexpensive smartphones and high-tech such as Virtual trainings for teachers over Zoom and preloaded tablets, to keep these children learning.

As evidenced by crises like Ebola, learning loss caused by school closures is most acute in children from marginalized communities. Without a digitally directed, sustained and intensive intervention, these children may never fully recover from this pandemic.

Project Equity is designed to address the disparate impact on education for the extremely poor and marginalized and rural communities.

What is your solution?

Project Equity is a broad-based initiative designed to lessen the learning loss caused by school closures. Components include:

Phone Tutoring: Partnerships with local universities, where students tutor children in rural communities via bi-weekly calls. We trained all volunteers in tutoring techniques and managing relationships with families.

Peer-to-Peer Tutoring: The majority of our communities in rural Honduras do not have cellular access. To reach students, we created a tutoring program where older students tutor the younger students within their community.

Virtual Teacher Training Course: Focused on distance support, the importance of testing, teaching at the right level and mitigating learning loss.

Inexpensive Smartphones: We provide our Lower Secondary Scholarship recipients with inexpensive smartphones loaded with educational apps to enable learning while schools are closed or on hybrid days. Students attend instructional trainings and virtual workshops hosted by our staff and participate in our WhatsApp support groups!

Pilot Tablet Program: A low-cost tablet for each family preloaded with educational apps such as Kahn Academy and ReadAlong to help children catch up, learn at the appropriate grade level and stay engaged in their education while at home. We host trainings for families on the use the tablets. We also train teachers on how to integrate them into instruction.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

School the World operates in the poorest parts of Guatemala, Honduras and Panama with marginalized, rural, and largely indigenous communities. Learning levels are low and resources scarce, particularly for girls. Teachers are poorly trained and unaccountable.

Many parents within these failing school systems cannot read or write, and are often unaware of their rights and responsibilities in overseeing their children’s education, creating a misunderstanding of the parents’ roles as first educators and a lack of accountability for remote school directors and teachers.

School the World initiates transformation at the grassroots level, partnering with parents, communities and local governments to organize around education. With education as the organizing principle of the community, local schools become the engine of sustainable development.

Our in-country program staff are born and raised in the rural areas in which we operate and are eminently knowledgeable of the needs of our communities. Their relationships with each community creates a trusting bond with parents and our partnership with local governments creates the same bond with teachers in each community.

When COVID-19 closed schools, children in our communities were sent home without any learning resources. These homes do not have electricity let alone books, internet or televisions to watch the government broadcasted lessons. We immediately pivoted to meet the new needs of our communities with our COVID-19 programming (School the World Radio, creation and delivery of work guides, WhatsApp support groups, messages for parents and students, etc.).

Through nearly 900 surveys of students and parents, it was clear that the absence of digital resources was the primary barrier from keeping children engaged. Surveys showed that students had no or little interaction with their teachers or any other type of formal schooling before the first school closures. Without broadband, television, etc. they had no access to digital learning. Even print materials were not thoroughly distributed.

We surveyed parents to figure out the correct time for Radio Program and phone tutoring. Made phone calls to parents to figure out times that work for these programs - engaging them in the solution and understanding their needs. Taking all of their thoughts into designing the solution.

As school closures persisted and children were falling further behind, we knew that a deeper intervention was required.

Project Equity is designed to make digital learning accessible to these rural communities. It accounts for lack of cellular access, internet and electricity while still bringing advanced digital tools like tablets and smartphones into homes and ensuring that educators know how to teach remotely, get children caught up and teach at the right grade level.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

Project Equity is aligned with all dimensions of the Challenge. However, the primary objective is to make digital learning accessible to these rural impoverished areas, by engaging students, parents and teachers. Through other dimensions, such as the health and well-being of our students (WhatsApp support groups), support to teachers to adapt their pedagogy and personalized instruction (Virtual Teacher Training) and collaborative projects with parents and creative play (Tablet Program, Parent WhatsApp groups and Phone Tutoring), we are ensuring that children living in rural Central America remain engaged in learning during and following this pandemic.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Guatemala

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

Scholarship students have been given an inexpensive smartphone and are part of our WhatsApp Support Groups.

Our Teacher Training has already trained 2,200+ teachers in Guatemala and Honduras and both the MOEs and the teachers themselves have given rave reviews. Teachers are now in the second phase, which trains them on how to work with their students remotely as schools are now in a hybrid capacity. We are implementing the third part of this program, “in-classroom coaching”, which will help teachers put the lessons they learned into action, in areas that are low COVID-19.

Our Tablet Program is in 5 GUA communities and we are hosting workshops on how to use a tablet as well as the preloaded educational applications.

Our Tutoring Programs have been implemented in both Guatemala and Honduras. 4,103 children are being tutored over the phone in Guatemala and 656 children are receiving peer tutoring in Honduras.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Roberto Tecu (not bilingual), Ana Joya (bilingual)