Jara Worldwide

We consider The Elevate Prize as a platform to the doorway to a strong network of impact individuals and organizations where we can leverage knowledge and skills from one another. Jara as an emergency education solution for K-12 children looks forward to scaling globally alongside other impact solutions to cater to the needs of the low-power communities. If we are selected as a winner, we would utilize the sum to launch our low-cost off-grid (solar+crank powered) IoT personal education device: the Jara Unit.Our solution is co-created with children, teachers and communities, incorporating localised sociocultural and gender sensitive digital contents (curriculum)  in Nepal for distance learning and in-class learning. The pilot and launch will be conducted with 5000 children, 100 teachers while creating trained 50 Jara Ambassadors  in under-resourced schools. The successful completion of pilot and launch will help us scale and expand our operations globally to refugee camps, out of school children and disaster affected children, with the next immediate countries of operations including Nigeria and India. Our pilot will be conducted amidst a pandemic which provides children with an opportunity to access quality education and accelerated digital inclusion.

I wasn’t born into the best situation - one parent battling immigration issues, the other in the hospital battling 4 different cancers 5 times. Both unable to work, my education is what gave me a chance at living an empowered life. I wanted to give back and make the biggest positive impact in this world. I learned through the UN School and my curiosity, that access to quality education can solve global issues. My whole life and career has been spanning around understanding the needs of children in learning crises and their situations that has been keeping them far from learning. I came up with the idea for Jara at age 15, went to school for Electrical Engineering to learn how to build the Unit, gained experience through writing country-wide K-12 robotics curriculum, directing the tech-education camp-500 campers, supervising an engineering innovation lab, managing 72 companies as business management consultant for a gov-tech commercialization company. I turned down 6-figure job offers out of university to start Jara, and I haven’t looked back. I am on a life mission to ensure every child has access to a quality education so they too, can live an empowered life.

Jara is closing the digital divide in education by being the distance learning solution for low-power and low-internet communities globally. We build the Jara Unit, a crank-powered and solar-powered education device that can enable children to learn anytime, anywhere and is a teaching tool for teachers.

With the increase of technological innovation globally, the poverty gap is widening and the most effective way to close this gap is access to quality education. Two-thirds of the world’s school aged children do not have access to internet at home and are losing out on education during pandemic[1]. Pre-COVID, 262 million children were out of school, 565 million were living in conflict/disaster affected countries[2], and 1 billion children were living in poverty[3]. Many under-resourced communities globally lag behind in education due to poor funding/infrastructure and lack of digital-tools to access e-learning. It is clear the “digital divide” is exacerbating inequality in access to information, and quality education needed to develop the skills for Future Of Work. 

Jara is committed to provide equitable access to quality education through our education packages used by teachers in low-power communities for K-12 students whose education is disrupted due to disasters like COVID-19.

[1]UNICEF-20

[2]UNESCO-18

[3]UNICEF-16

Jara Unit is an innovative solution co-created with children, teachers and parents while developing partnerships with local NGOs and education ministries. We have invested years to understand communities' needs and design programs based on learning from edtech programs and Jara’s surveys. The digital contents go beyond K-12 curriculum with focus on STEM and provides opportunity for children to learn life skills (WASH, climate change, rights) and financial literacy that helps them upskill for the future of work.  We create new economic opportunities to promote long-term community development which will also increase the adoption rates of Jara Unit through the Jara Ambassador program. 

The Jara Unit is unique due to (i) is the only device in the sector which is low-cost, updateable, and durable with low cost of operations- charges off grid and requires low  technological prerequisites (ii) localised teaching and learning contents (iii) provides highly specific, real time anonymized data on student achievement and study habits for use in research (iv) its ability to recycle the enclosures with low carbon footprints (v) is built for both teachers and students.

Jara is backed by Cisco and the World Bank has listed Jara as one of the recommended emergency education service providers. 

Jara is committed to ensuring that all children in the world can have equitable access to the tools,technology and support they need to advance their education. We know there is no easy solution to the digital divide, that is why we have developed a highly innovative, scalable product and program to empower children in under-resourced communities to receive a quality education through the Jara Unit. The Unit is a solution that fits the needs of the learners and meets educational inclusivity in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity and children with disabilities affected by poverty,natural disasters/conflicts. 

The program  will combat learning crises in communities  by addressing  the digital inequalities which have been overpowering those who have minimal access to EdTech which will decrease the cost of education. To make our work  scalable,we build partnerships with (1)local content partners/e-learning platforms (2)local implementation partners that have relationships with stakeholders and (3)global scaling partners that enable us to reach more children quickly and effectively.

Through extensive research, Jara has identified where we fit in, in the ecosystem of education for children in under-resourced/disaster-affected communities. We are backed by 7 years of Stanford research proving our methodology of teaching effective for vulnerable off-the-grid communities.

We have received organic interest from various types of stakeholders from countries globally interested in large purchases. Our go-to-market strategy to establish long term partnership with INGOs and NGOs are our strong marketing positioning to reach as many children as efficiently as possible in under-served communities globally. At this stage we are preparing to pilot our solution to reach the wider market. We  have conducted consultations with relevant stakeholders and learned what they want. For instance we are in continuous consultations with government officials in various countries, who at the wake of the COVID-19 are looking for solution like ours. The pilot and launch is planned in August 2021 with 300 children and 5000 children accordingly in Nepal.Till date, we have iterated  the Jara Unit to meet the children’s needs based on the prototype testing conducted in Nepal and years of global research.Our innovative device and model has been listed as one of the recommended emergency education service providers by the World Bank which provides us with an edge to work directly with governments and donors. We see ourselves completing the pilot, launching the solution and scaling nationwide in Nepal and to Nigeria and India within a year. 

We have our impact goal at three levels: (i) at country operations level-  the access and use of the Jara education package by the children in the low-power low internet communities (iii) at impact level-improved learning of children with accelerated digital inclusion while creating pathways to higher education and better livelihood options (iv) at SDG level- impact as many children as efficiently possible by closing the digital divide in education as a distance learning solution globally while producing low carbon footprints with off-grid device, recycled enclosure and educated children opting climate friendly decisions, contributing to SDGs 4, 5, 10 and 13. 

We are starting our operations with Nepal and scale globally within the next two years. Our go to market strategy is strong NGO and INGO partnerships at global and country level, something we have strong connections in. Furthermore, we have localized strategy to program management and adaptive result based M&E to achieve the intended outcomes and impacts. For instance, Jara Ambassador program provides us with the higher adoption rate of our solution alongside continuity of the program as the technical service provider for update and maintenance of the Jara Units.

At this time we are really looking forward to completing our final product development so that we can launch, something we are extremely close to being able to do. Our dedicated team has made tremendous progress over 4 years , and are now receiving booming market demand globally. We can scale to the global market after the successful piloting which is the top most priority for our team. Along with many other initiatives, Jara was also not immune to the consequences of COVID-19. The fundraising during COVID-19 for ventures like ours was limited. Though EdTech flourished during the pandemic, most of the funding was dedicated to software, even though one of the most blatant pain-points during 2020 was lack of access to appropriate hardware for distance learning. 

We have more demand for our product than we currently have capacity for, so we are looking forward to expanding our team to meet this global demand, which we can achieve by winning the Elevate Prize.

Elevate is a grand platform to make our work visible to a wider audience and networks. As an Elevate Prize winner we would be investing more time to make our work visible as we move towards our pilot, launch and scale. At the same time we would like to leverage the strong connections/networks of Elevate with research institutions, emerging and established industry leaders and development leaders to grow as a learning organization in the EdTech market. Furthermore, as a Elevate prize winner, our organization will be part of the network of changemakers from everywhere, and that would be a dream come true for us - to be surrounded by people who have also committed their entire lives to being vessels for positive change. Having access to learning opportunities from such a great network who have been doing this for decades enables us to grow everyday, and to step into our full power so that we can empower as many people as possible and build a better future for all.

We believe in order to create true global positive change, one must bring the world together. Jara has diverse team members residing in different parts of the world across all ages- Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Netherlands, US and we are proud to be leading a diverse team who share abundant ideas to drive our mission to reality. The team members are empowered as leaders which has enabled us to move forward as planned with continuous learning and lots of brainstorming, discussion and co-creation of the program. We have developed our core values that are empowerment focused because I believe everyone deserves to be seen, heard, valued, and supported. 

Led by a woman of determination who is hell-bent to contribute significantly to dismantling the ongoing education crisis, Soraya’s efforts have been highlighted by Forbes, Cisco, Samsung, and the United Nations. Jara has an award-winning international team with a wide-range of expertise and impact in education, disaster relief, hardware/manufacturing, gender equity, app development, data, finance, refugee education, large system design, and management. We value local team members and recruit local community members. Our Country Director-Nepal has impacted 50,000 children- out of school girls, children in emergencies and low resourced communities and has a handful of experiences in participatory research to understand the needs of the beneficiaries. Our CTO is one of Nigeria’s most famous inventors and leaders in IoT and Tech for Good. Our mentors, advisors, and board members include industry leaders in IoT, product development, education, humanitarian development, activism, and more. Furthermore, The Jara Ambassador Program trains and coaches local community members who provide technical support to children, teachers and communities and hence creating new jobs in the communities.

I consider my leadership style as empowering, with flexibility, participatory and adaptability at the core. As the CEO of Jara, I empower my team members to lead their role and have been able to create an environment where they are able to express their needs, ideas and thoughts. In times of hardship, such as the pandemic, I sacrificed my salary to support my team. Also no task is below me, I will do any task needed of me in order to achieve our mission. Even though we are a small team, we have all been working hard to achieve our mission with our organizational values and ethics at the core. Over the four years, during my leadership, we have been recipients of Cisco’s 2018 Global Problem Solver Challenge followed by the Grand Prize at Cisco Live in Melbourne, Cisco Impact in Las Vegas, chosen as 1 of 3 entrepreneurs to compete in 1850 Coffee’s Bold Pioneers Challenge. We tied for first place, and recognitions from Forbes, Bustle, and PR Newswire, and are now receiving booming market demand globally.  My previous experiences in managing portfolios in the tech-education camp, engineering innovation lab, and gov-tech commercialization company has strengthened my leadership skills.

United Nations: https://youtu.be/UcMN6xnOxhI

 Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/us/ssic/session/how-iot-can-educate-the-1-billion-children-in-poverty/

Global Problem Solvers - The Series: 

The funding will contribute to our pilot, launch, and scale. With the completion of the prototype, our upcoming main expenses are towards completing and testing the Jara Units to meet tailored needs of children, partnership development with donors and relevant stakeholders, to pilot and launch Jara Units to scale our operations to millions of children globally to meet the under-served EdTech markets, to end the current existing global learning crises and digital divide. 

We have partnerships with established development leaders, e-learning platforms, data processing partners, research institutes and tech industry leaders at global and local level.  At this stage, we are not making our partnerships public and we are redacting the names of our partners for now.