The Jara Unit

Jara brings education to refugees and disaster affected regions through a technology we are building — the Jara Unit. It is a personal low-cost personal crank+solar powered tablet that teaches geographically custom education to people who do not have access to electrical grids, generators, or the internet.

The 2015 earthquake in Nepal left millions of people displaced and out of school.

UNICEF reported that 13 million children have been displaced from classrooms in the Middle East alone due to wars. 

In parts of Western Nepal, women still practice Chhaupadi - during 7 days of menstruation, women are kept in seclusion because they are seen as impure, excluding them from attending school for 1 week each month.

Access to education is lost in natural disaster and displacement, and even when efforts are made to remedy this, gender, disability, and socioeconomic discrimination often prevails — inclusion becomes an afterthought.

Children who are displaced by natural disasters or political tension suffer from lack of access to education. In Nepal, women who practice Chauppadi often drop out of school because they miss 1 week each month due to being in isolation during their menstruation cycles. With the Jara Unit, because it uses crank power to charge, both demographics will continue their development despite their location or lack of access to a classroom, allowing personalized access to practical and traditional skills, and empowering children to continue their education.

We aim to create a world where the situation you are born into does not determine your future. Our goal is to enable our users to develop skills in order to meet basic human rights, rebuild infrastructure, continue their education despite their circumstance (independent of electrical grids and internet), and ultimately join the workforce.

We will work with local Jara Ambassadors to track the progress of the Jara Unit, and our device will contain a chip to supplement the tracking of learning effectivity.

Jara focuses on sustainable, inclusive solutions inclusive of gender, socioeconomic, or disability circumstances.

Jara ambassadors will closely follow and monitor progress, utilizing ethnographic research. - Our pre-pilot of 15 test units preloaded with educational content for 15 kids ages 10-13 in Nepal, facilitated by a teacher is facilitated.

Whilst Jara ambassadors are following progress in real time, our devices will contain a chip so we can follow progress remotely at scale. Each student will have a username which will help us identify and quantify the data. - Launching our pilot, manufacture and deploy 150 pilot test units in the Central Development Region of Nepal, ensuring our curriculum is sustainable.

Jara Ambassadors will assess the practical curriculum of Jara, take photos of the progress, and the Jara website will contain a map of all the progress that is recorded for the public to see. - Develop a final product for a 1000 unit launch. We will form additional partnerships and assess expansion possibilities in other communities.

The Jara Unit is the first low-cost education device that uses basic technology and does not require any pre-existing infrastructure. It is wireless, waterproof, dust-proof, durable, and consistently secure. In addition, it uses non-conventional, crank and solar, energy sources to charge. By deploying durable but extremely basic technology with cheap, readily available components, Jara aims to decrease device theft and black market transactions.

We understand that each region of the world is unique, requiring distinctive curriculum specializations to meet our user's wants and needs. Therefore we host ethnographic research and conduct user interviews in each region before deploying anything. The Jara Unit provides easy access to geographically-designed gamified curriculum, based on user's needs: 

Traditional Curriculum: i.e. Nepal asked for: Math, Science, English, Nepali sourced from local and international educators, open-source resources, and existing educational databases. 

Practical Curriculum: i.e. How to build a plumbing system with the resources around you in Western Nepal

Once we have concluded that a specific region wants Jara and will benefit, we source together contextual educational content, preload it onto the Jara Units, hire locals looking to create impact, and have those locals distribute the Jara Units.

Our onsite Jara Ambassadors will teach users how to use the Jara Unit and show why it is beneficial, and teach users how to fix the Jara Units when broken. Furthermore, we will facilitate the practical curriculums and encourage continuous use of the Jara Unit.

Product Sales: The Jara Unit will cost $3.50 to manufacture and assemble. We will sell them at $10-$15 price points to governments, education ministries, and NGOs.

SaaS (Software as a Service) Model: If a customer (a government, education ministry, or NGO) would like more educational content added to their region’s Jara Units, we will have the customer subscribe to a SaaS model for access to more of our internationally curated educational flashcard platform.

HaaS (Hardware as a Service) Model: If a pre-pilot, pilot, and launch in a region goes successfully and a customer would like to implement Jara on a grand scale in their region, we will have them pay a premium to implement more Jara Units.

Furthermore, we will collaborate with as many organizations who are either: -Education Content Creators -NGO's existing in areas we plan to implement Jara -Education Ministries -Design Firms -CSP Programs (corporate social responsibility programs)

We are still working out how to convert our collaborators' educational content to our innovative flashcard process (which is the UI our curriculum is delivered). We are working to automate this system, which will require a collaboration with AI companies. 

https://www.facebook.com/JoinJara/

http://www.joinjara.com/

We believe our solutions will become stronger, more scaleable, and more efficient with the resources, expertise, and mentorship of Solve. Furthermore, we are excited to share and receive insight with socially-minded entrepreneurs, and ultimately unlock quality opportunities for growth in our respective solutions. 

We at Jara, believe that we are stronger together. We do not need to reinvent the wheel — Global challenges cannot be solved alone.

Currently working on partnerships with education content creators, NGOs, and local organizations in the regions we are targeting. 

Potential partnerships:

Rumie.org ; librarieswithoutborders.org ; learningequality.org