Equal Start Education

Leverage technology to ensure all marginalized children have equal access to quality education that is affordable, accessible, sustainable and scalable

In Malaysia, refugee, migrant and stateless children have no rights to attend public school.  There are 450,000 or more out-of-school children (Malaysia Ministry of Education, Education for All). Non-citizen children are disproportionately (50%) more likely to be out of school, the incidence higher among girls compared to boys (UNICEF 2019).  30% of refugee children have access to education compared to 98% of Malaysians (UNHCR). COVID-19 school closures have widened the gap.

Challenges faced by marginalized families seeking education include the shortage of affordable learning centres, lack of capacity, poverty, and school closures. Many untrained teachers are teaching in a language they are not proficient.

Schools face huge difficulties with funding, maintaining qualified staffing and transportation safety, particularly for young girls. The overall quality of education in refugee schools is below standard.

There is little prospect to expand educational offerings to meet the overall needs of these invisible children using traditional school solutions.

Digital education holds the promise to address these challenges immediately to reach many out-of-school children. Digital solutions enable facilitator-directed, self-paced learning in both at-school and virtual classrooms.

Enuma (Kit-Kit School, X-Prize winner), Khan Academy and others are rapidly expanding offerings, focusing on language arts, mathematics and science. Our social-emotional curriculum supplements these offerings.

Our mission is to create a high quality, comprehensive curriculum and delivery platform, by curating the latest in edtech, implementing our digital solution in community-based Micro Learning Centres, and sharing our program freely with other NGOs throughout Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

Equal Start Education primarily addresses the lack of access to ‘quality’ education which is confounded by many factors.

In Malaysia, refugee, asylum-seeking, migrant and stateless children have no access to public school. The number of out-of-school children from pre-K through secondary is 450K+ according to estimates from UNICEF, UNHCR and the Malaysian MOE.

There is insufficient capacity of NGO learning centres as only 30% of refugee children have access to some form of education, mostly primary education, with fewer offerings for pre-K and secondary education.

Private learning centres are well beyond the means of a typical refugee or migrant family. There is a huge lack of accessibility.

Teachers are typically kind hearted, untrained volunteers, or unqualified members of the marginalised communities working for substandard wages. The quality of education that is offered is below standard, except in a few well funded refugee schools.

The current models are unsustainable and not scalable.

Flexibility in deployment is key to reaching many children relatively immediately. Our Micro Learning Centre concept using a Digital Learning Model will substantially reduce the cost of education, raise the standard of the curriculum, address the shortage of qualified teachers, quickly bring education opportunities to more children, while being straightforward to implement by the communities and partner organizations. Together with remote learning capability, we have the means to reach the forgotten children.

Sadly, there is a generation of children growing up illiterate.  The Equal Start Education team is committed to making a difference in these children’s lives.

Equal Start Education aims to bring educational opportunities to marginalized children who presently have no access to education.

We envision students who discover how easily accessible learning and information can be. A blend of in-class studies and independent self-study is utilized. Ultimately, students are prepared for international certificate programs such as IGCSE.

SEL is integrated throughout the curriculum. Students with strong SEL skills have good moral values and are eager to learn, resulting in positive learning outcomes, and ultimately greater success in life. 

Quality education is the key to overcoming poverty and growing leaders to serve their communities and society.

We work closely with NGOs across Malaysia with many years experience working with refugee communities, running refugee schools, and developing leaders - to understand their challenges and receive their input on the promise of digital solutions. Our initial pilot is in an established refugee school to gain first-hand understanding of their needs, and to measure the impact of digital learning.

We are using primarily English as the teaching medium. English speakers generally have access to higher paying jobs. Digital competency will give these children the ability to leverage the vast amount of information available on the world wide web. Education can reduce child marriage and child labor for adolescents when they remain in school. We intend to build on these essential first steps, to allow every child to learn and grow to their life potential, including completing secondary education and qualifying for university admittance.

ESE will employ innovative and effective digital learning software such as Khan Kids, Kit Kit School, and Khan Academy. SEL resources are from Overcoming Obstacles, Moshi for Schools, Sesame Street, and others.

In Malaysia, internet connectivity is widely available. We are installing high speed internet in our MLCs. For areas with poor or no connectivity, we will use Kolibri to set up a local intranet. Virtual classrooms are used during COVID closures, or for remote locations.

Kit Kit School, Khan Kids and Khan employ mastery learning that accommodates various learning pace and styles, accelerated learning due late entry. STEM lessons are supplemented with hands-on activities.

SEL activities are weaved throughout the curriculum to provide students with the life skills needed to thrive in the workplace. 

We will employ the built-in LMS to allow our educational team to monitor student progress and coach the facilitators how to address the particular needs of each learner.

Facilitator preparatory training and continuing education develops competence of the facilitators and professional skill.

Parental awareness of the value of education is important for program acceptance and success. In times of crisis, parents lacking resources are challenged to respond to all needs of their children, focusing on the physical needs of their young children, overlooking opportunities to adequately care for their children’s SE and cognitive development (WHO 2018).

The MLC will serve as a community resource, and can be utilized for adult education in the evenings, with classes such as ESOL, basic computer skills, and parenting courses.

Bud Valade, Founder, Equal Start

Corporate leader with 25+ years successful team development for Fortune 300 companies, managing multi-million-dollar programs. Inventor with 13 global patents.

The Digital Learning Model (DLM) addresses the challenges of lack of qualified teachers, and sub-standard educational programs. The curriculum, lessons plans and activities are pre-planned. The teachers (facilitators) are instructed weekly how to deliver the next week’s activities. Student progress can be monitored both in class and remotely by experienced and qualified educators. With the DLM model, classroom management can be successfully conducted by a trained facilitator, who may be from the target community.

The Micro Learning Centre (MLC) model flips the education access paradigm over. Instead of bringing the children to the education, we bring the education to the children! This has profound benefit in several dimensions. First is cost and sustainability. Transportation is roughly half the cost of operating a learning centre. We eliminate this as the MLC is within the community. High overhead costs of large buildings and admin costs of large staffs are greatly reduced. Then there are other tangible benefits such as: parental involvement in their children's education (encouraging all parents to volunteer), MLC as a community resource for adult education, low rental cost or donated spaces, community empowerment and development.

A sustainable cost model plus a standard DLM curriculum, enables scaling of the concept to reach many more children. We intend to share our learnings and experiences freely with other NGOs and partners, to multiply the benefit, to reach more children.

A pilot at a refugee school is in progress. Each child has a baseline assessment using the EGRA and EGMA built in assessment in Kit Kit School. The learners were making very good progress when schools were suspended in Malaysia in May due to a COVID-19 surge.

In preparation for the school closure, we configured 26 tablets with Kiddoware parental control software, Khan Academy, Khan Kid’s, Kit Kit School and Google Meet. We installed Khan Kids on parent's mobile devices and briefed them on the use. We created remote classrooms to monitor progress and assign lessons. Teachers are conducting remote classrooms throughout the week, affording us the opportunity to gain experience with remote learning and the challenges encountered.

We are preparing to open an MLC in a village where 40 students presently have no access to education, and a few others, as soon as schools resume in Malaysia.

One positive outcome from the world-wide school closures is the accelerated development of remote learning solutions. Digital learning software on electronic devices, specifically created for developing-countries contexts, has been tested for the past 5+ years. Significant advances are being made. We will leverage these edtech advancements.

Kit Kit School by Enuma is the co-winner of the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE competition. It is an open-source, scalable software to enable children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Khan Kids also focuses on early learning of English, math and science. It has significantly increased its content in the past few years, including adding the learning path, with an AI powered mastery learning strategy.

Khan Academy is well known, and has introduced mastery learning. Khan is expanding the language arts, science, computing, economics and life skills content.

Moshi Kids, and others have wonderful SEL content with detailed lesson plans.

The challenge now is to deploy these new technologies widely, in a variety of contexts, so all children can be reached.

Our theory of change consists of:

1. The Digital Learning Model can relatively quickly be implemented to bring quality educational opportunities where none presently exist.
2. The Digital Learning Curriculum of curated content will raise the educational quality of new and existing learning centres that are using untrained teachers.
3. A trained facilitator with continuing training is sufficient to deliver the DLM curriculum to the students, while growing their professional skill.
4. DLM can accelerate the learning outcomes of children, both on grade and below grade level.
5. In a low economic resource environment, sustainability and scalability are enhanced through a distributed education model with small scale, low-cost micro learning centres.
6. A community based MLC encourages parental involvement in their children's education which strenghtens the family unit and community.
7. Innovative partnerships and collaboration will lead to creative solutions to overcome the complex challenges of refugee, asylum-seeking, migrant and stateless education in Southeast Asia.

Program performance will be measured by our key metrics:

• Number of out-of-school students reached
• Number of communities served
• Number of learning centers opened and operating
• Sustainability improvements of learning centers
  • Cost per student per month
  • Communityinvolvement and ownership
• Student learning outcomes:
  • Student summative assessments: baseline, mid term, final
  • Student formative assessments: often built in to the learning app
  • Student progress from LMS
  • Student advancement: abiity to advance to grade level
  • Social emotional assessments
• Stakeholder surveys: Parents, teachers, community leaders, students
• Student enrolment and retention: by gender, particularly when students reach adolescence

Year 1 – Pilot: Complete the pilot program, assess the results and use lessons learned to refine the pedagogical model. Standards and metrics are established and measured. Pilot sites include an existing Learning Centre, one or more new MLCs and potentially new partner installations, using a variety of implementation scenarios. 150 children served.

Year 2 – Expansion: Open 10 new MLCs and at least 2 new partner installations. 450+ children served. Along with leveraging current partnerships, we will continue to reach out and connect to other communities, NGOs and organisations to identify opportunities for new implementations. Start exploring MLC opportunities outside of Penang. Develop the secondary school program. Enlarge the ESE staff to increase capability and management of the MLCs. Funding from CSR programs and grants.

Year 3 – Expansion: 45+ MLCs and 4 local partner installations. 2000+ students served in Penang. Further refinement of the pedagogical model from lessons learned. Sharing with partners throughout Malaysia to amplify the reach to 5000 children. Start exploring MLC opportunities beyond Malaysia. Enlarge the ESE staff as needed to increase capability and management of the MLCs. Funding from CSR programs and grants.

Year 4  - 5 Expansion: Strengthen the expansion across Malaysia and implement new MLCs and grow staff in other SE Asia countries. Funding from CSR programs and grants.

Ideally, the class facilitators will come from the respective communities. Identifying facilitators proficient in English, that also have the ability to manage a classroom is needed. In most cases, the facilitators will require training and development to develop the needed skills and work ethic. We plan a strong continuing facilitator training and mentoring program to grow capable facilitators.

As Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, there is not a political framework to support refugee, asylum-seeking, migrant and stateless children education. UNHCR, UNICEF, IOM partnerships are important as they are advocates for refugee and migrant causes with the Malaysia MOE and other Government entities, and will be advocates for our program.

Parental engagement and involvement in their children’s education will occur through inclusiveness, encouraging parents to volunteer each week in the community centre. Parents will have hand on opportunities to learn themselves with the digital media. Our plan is to grow the educational ecosystem around the child.

Greater financial resources through donations and grants is required as we scale up the program in the coming years. We are presently expanding our network and will continue to do so in the coming year.

Octava Foundation and the MIT Solve Team will be a valuable asset to our program to connect us with the resources we need to further refine our model as we expand.

The Equal Start Education concept was borne of the COVID-19 crisis. On 18 Mar 2020, Malaysia went into a full lockdown to combat the spread of the virus. All, but critical businesses were closed. Schools were closed. Those living in poverty and on the edge were without means to provide for their families. Providing emergency food aid very quickly brought us into the plight of refugees and migrants in Penang. When the first lock down ended, I personally met with refugee leaders, and learned from them that their greatest concern was the education of their children, of which fewer than 25% has access to some form of education. It is tragic. This spurred me to find a solution.

I visited several refugee learning centres, learned first hand of their challenges and struggles. It quickly became apparent that even with all of the dedicated effort of kind hearted people working in NGOs, the approaches used would never be capable to scale to bring quality education to 400K+ children out of school in Malaysia. Rather, most of the refugee learning centres in Penang closed as a result of lockdowns. A completely new, innovative solution is required. Leveraging technology is the key to creating an educational ecosystem that can reach the majority of out of school children.

Along with searching for innovative solutions, we formed a diverse steering committee and worked hard to network with other potential solutions providers internationally and across Malaysia.

Bud Valade – Founder 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bud-valade/

Joseph Fam – Administration and Community Development https://my.linkedin.com/in/ftfam

Jamie Tan – Education Lead

Lynne Juday – Digital Learning

Nikki Sorianto – Social Emotional

Nancy Fraley – Hands on Learning

Chin Valade – Arts and Crafts

Kelly Wisner – Refugee Education

Jon Ronning – Tech Lead

The Equal Start Education team is comprised of highly skilled and experienced practitioners representing a range of experiences and backgrounds. It includes individuals who are educators, technicians, and business leaders.

The ESE team is well connected, working closely with Penang Stop Human Trafficking Campaign/Aspire Penang, a refugee advocate and community development NGO; UNHCR, Penang Science Cluster; and University Sains Malaysia. Importantly, ESE works closely with refugee leaders from Spring Learning Centre and refugee community leaders from the Penang Refugee Network. Together, this diverse range of talent and experience allows careful consideration of the requirements, detailed planning and execution to lead to successful project outcomes.

The ESE team is communicating with global NGOs such as Teach the World Foundation, a pioneer in digital education for marginalized children; well established refugee schools in Malaysia, such as El Shaddai, Dignity and NTA; software developers such as Enuma and Khan, who have rich experience and success in bringing DLM to children within marginalised and disadvantaged communities worldwide.

Our ultimate goal is to partner, strategize, and share the knowledge and best practices we develop with other NGOs who are also working to bring education to these invisible children.

On 18 March 2020, Malaysia instituted a nationwide movement control order (MCO) which shut down the country. Overnight tens of thousands of people in Penang were out of work. Having lived in Penang for 3 years, I knew these families were in deep trouble.

I read an article on the BBC about a charitable movement sweeping Canada called Caremongering, and immediately started a Caremongering group in Penang. www.facebook.com/groups/caremongeringpenang

We quickly grew the volunteer team to over 100 people. I was no stranger to this. I previously built an Research and Development team for Tyco International in Shanghai from scratch. Within 3 weeks we were partnered with NGOs like Engage and the Kuok Foundation, and others, and working with the Civil Defense and the Penang State Welfare office. Within 6 weeks our team was capable to deliver food aid anywhere in the entire state of Penang.  By the end of the first MCO, 3 months later, in June 2020, we had delivered food aid to over 25,000 people. By now, Caremongering has provided over 12,500 food aid packs, and 17,800 hot meals to needy families in Penang, and is well known in Penang amongst NGOs and politicians.

ESE is partnered with PSHTC/Aspire and Spring Learning Centre for the initial pilot site locations. 

PSHTC/Aspire is a well established advocate for refugee causes, and supports refugee community empowerment. PSHTC/Aspire will be a close partner to identify refugee communities in need of a new MLC in Penang.

Spring Learning Centre is a refugee run learning centre, established since 2013. We planned our first pilot site with Spring Learning Centre to measure the impact of the Digital Learning Model.

Penang Science Cluster provided tablets and technical guidance for the STEM curriculum. They coordinated the donation of 30 Samsung Tab A tablets from Intel.

Enuma and Khan Academy are providing digital learning software. We are in communication with their development and management teams. 

Kiddoware is providing parental control software at no-charge for marginalized children.  

In-Tech is providing tablet storage cabinets and pilot funding, as part of their CSR responsibilities.

We have a working relationship with the UNHCR Education unit, El Shaddai Refugee Learning Centre, Dignity for Children and University of Sains Malaysia to exchange ideas.

As we learn and grow at Equal Start Education, we want to leverage the knowledge and connections of a larger community, that is equally dedicated to finding innovative solutions to the educational challenges faced by marginalized communities throughout the world. 

The Octava team can help us immensely by connecting us to thought leaders, partner organizations, digital learning software developers, and other teams to collaborate to learn, grow and expand our solution.

The comprehensive needs assessment will be beneficial to help us identify any gaps in the ideation of our educational and business solutions. Further support to help us refine our business models, particularly when we look to scale our solution is greatly appreciated. 

Establishing a robust impact measurement plan is vital to refine our implementation strategies, and to prioritize process improvements.

We look forward to building a long-term partnership with Octava Foundation.

Equal Start Education is a diverse team of educators and business leaders working to solve a very complex socio-educational problem. As such, we need the collaboration and support from many voices to be successful. 

We intend to leverage the learnings from others with complementary programs, studies and technologies. Already we are reaching out and in dialogue with INGOs, NGOs running learning centres, university professors and researchers, software developers, government entities. We have much more work to do, and many more collaborators to find.

Octava partnerships and mentoring are key to:

• Expand our educational model. 
• Train and grow capable facilitators for our MLCs.
• Fine tune our business and implementation model based on data collection and analysis.
• Connect and collaborate with software and hardware developers.
• Connect with International NGOs and Foundations.