RadioEducación 4.0

About 32% of Latin Americans do not have access to the internet, creating a soft skills gap in the region. These soft skills are: temwork, empathy, leadership, emotional intelligence, innovation, among others. In response, Radioeducation complements formal education with a program with content that strengthens these skills designed in an universal language. Due to the Pandemic and limited access to internet, its diffusion is through community radio and podcasts. We validate what we have learned and generate digital certification badges upon completion of the program. Additionally, throughut the program the students are challenged to put their learnings into practice through the design and implementation of an innovation project.

Our proposal offers access to high quality eduction to rural areas with no access to it and improves the low level soft skills among the young population. The lack of connectivity prevents the growth of the population in this area, increasing the socioeconomic gap between the different social groups. We seek that more young people and adults are instructed in soft skills in order to boost the economy in rural areas in LATAM.

According to figures from the Ministries of ICT and Education in Colombia, respectively, there are around 23 million Colombians who do not have access to the Internet and only 1% of the lower strata access higher education in Colombia.  About 32% of Latin Americans do not have access to the internet, creating a soft skills gap in the region

Additionally, 70% of the children and young people who do not have access to education in Colombia come from rural areas and regions far from the center of the country. The absence of educational institutions and access to basic services represents one of the main threats to education.

To survive this scenario we believe that it is necessary to prepare young people not only in the content offered by traditional education but also in training young people in skills and soft skills that are required today to help solve daily problems, lead and direct groups, be productive and have the ability to generate and undertake ideas in the face of adversities for employability. Through the strengthening of these competencies, young people can be more collaborative people with their environment. This personal transformation translates into a social change that ultimately translates into the improvement of their region and the country, taking care of the present and improving the future.

We bring educational content focused on developing soft skills through innovation projects to young people in rural contexts with difficulties in accessing the internet. We offer training programs in audio format and with mentoring of teachers who are experts in entrepreneurship and innovation in alliance with educational institutions with a social purpose and with an interest in the formation of skills for the 21st century.

The RadioEducation 4.0 training model has four components:
1. Alignment of the Institutional Educational Plan (PEI) of the Educational Institution.
2. Coordination with the community radio station for the transmission of educational content in soft skills to teachers and students.
3. Monitoring the innovation project aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDG)
4. Training and certification of soft skills through digital badges for teachers and students.

The RadioEducation 4.0 training model consists of 5 levels by which the teachers in rural areas receive virtual training and guide students through learning content transmitted in the community radio. At each level, students carry out the deliverables through the teacher on the technological platform provided by RadioEducación 4.0, where they will have follow-up and feedback from the RadioEducación 4.0 trainers. At the end of each level a digital badge is obtained. After completing all the deliverables, they obtain the certification.

RadioEducación 4.0 offers educational content around soft skills such as innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship, communication, among others, taught through radio stations and podcast-type platforms. 

The contents are designed with a universal, basic and easy-to-understand language for people of different educational levels and from different rural regions of the country. The target population is young students in rural areas in the country and Latin America that have limited access to internet and that have limite access to their schools due to the current pandemic.

We differentiate ourselves from other educational solutions because we offer a complement to traditional education. We understand that knowledge is important, but we also believe that soft skills are necessary to get the most out of knowledge. We seek to generate competitive advantages in young people that allow them to generate value in their community and that, at the same time, generate value in themselves, helping them to grow personally and professionally. Additionally, we understand that the opportunities to access to technological tools are not the same for the entire population, so we focus on imparting content through radio and podcasts in order to reach rural and urban-vulnerable places.

We consider that our model is very aligned with the TPrize Challenge. In addition to offering tools to promote soft skills in rural contexts, it offers a challenge-based methodology where teachers and students learn by doing.

Our model prepares students in poor rural areas for the work of the future through a sustainable, accessible and inclusive model that teaches the competencies required to succeed in the current work environment, build your own business and ultimately help the region´s development. 

We are working with 4 Educational Institutions in Boyacá in the municipalities of Chita, Socotá and Jericó, reaching around 1200 students  through community stations and podcasts.

The model has proven successful and the students have been able to structure innovation projects to attend needs in their communities and bring prosperity.

Nex step is to grow this business model in order to reach many more communities in Colomabia and Latin America. 

We offer a disruptive solution because what was previously exclusive (information from experts from the most prestigious universities), we now make it inclusive and we are able to access the most poor and rural areas of the country that nobody else can reach.

Our program uses radio and podcasts to reach communities and shares practical knowledge for the development of key skills for this 21st Century. This is not found in the traditional educational models.

Among the technological tools that we use, we have a padlet as a platform so that teachers who have internet can access the contents. 

Additionall the model uses community radio stations to share the educational content.

Digital badges are produced upon the completion of the program.

We use proven platforms such as moodle, padlet or miro to share the content with the teachers in rural areas. In the pilot programs that we have runned, thay have worked successfully.

In addition to this we use community radio stations as an important channel to share content. 

We do not find relevant risks to mention.

By 2023, we will have reached 2,545,900 young people in Colombia, currently in junior high and high school according to DANE figures and who currently do not have internet access, with a certifiable 10% corresponding to 254,590 of them.

Thanks to the scalability of the program and common Latin American socioeconomic realities, in 5 years we plan to have a presence in other Spanish-speaking countries, such as Mexico, Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

Number of students and teachers trained

Impact of innovation projects in the community

growth of students who started working in companies vs the previous year

Numbers of education institutions certified

4 people and we are building a network of teachers to contribute with contents and classes.

I Andres Rubiano, have been a teacher for several universities in the country for over 10 years. Education is my passion and I have also searched for innovative models to impart knowledge among my students.

Rose Carrillo, is currently CFO of a company, and supports us part time in the financing an business model side of this innitiative.

2 additional members of the team are experts in media management and content preparation. 

We are convinced that through this project we can make a difference in the world and belive that with our skills we can make this project a reality. 

We value diversity in our team of 4 (that includes 3 women!). We value everyone´s opinion and believe that diversity brings better ideas, better results and a broader perspective to teams. 

We believe that our project is fully aligned to th eTPrize Challenge. We have a solution that is easily scalable and that provides a solution for poor rural areas with limited connectivity, impacted by the pandemic and with low access to high quality education.

We are convinced that through education and formation in soft skills we will provide valuable tools to this community to solve problems for their people, build their own entrepenurships and better compete in the work environment.

In human capital we are seaching for more teachers that are willing to contribute to this project with their knowledge and time.

In technology we want to build a platform to post our online content for students to access in the future and to make it scalable. 

Educational institutions and teachers that may share educational content in soft skills.

Edtech institutions that may make this model more scalable.