EtuPay - The Fund that Saves Education in Africa.

EtuPay helps users to collect the necessary funds via a kitty for access to quality education or for an educational project in Africa.

EtuPay is a cross-platform application (web, Android, iOS) developed in Flutter, free and secure that provides a system of fundraising for many, through a kitty to finance access to quality education for all in Africa currently available only in Benin. This fund can be used by a learner or his/her parent to finance his/her access to education (basic, secondary, vocational or university), or by an institution, a charitable organization, or an individual to finance the realization of a relevant educational project with the objective of access to quality education for all. While allowing the user (learners, parents, charities, schools, etc.) to prospect potential funders via our platform and obtain their financial support in the form of donations. The fund can be public or private. Etupay also has a School Marketplace to facilitate the online purchase of school supplies and other educational accessories, especially for users living in rural areas who often have difficulty purchasing quality school kits. It is indeed a perfect combination of Fintech and EdTech. It is for the first time that a kitty solution is solely and totally dedicated to the easy access to quality education to all in Benin.

With Etupay we hope to reduce the difficulties related to access to quality educational products and services for children and youth in Africa, mainly in Benin. 
According to new data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, approximately 263 million children and youth are not in school, which corresponds to almost a quarter of the European population. This figure includes 61 million children of primary school age, 60 million adolescents of lower secondary school age, and includes the first-ever estimate of upper secondary school age youth, 142 million. 
According to the global average, 15-17 year olds are four times more likely to be out of school. Worse, girls are more likely than boys to never set foot in a classroom. According to UIS data, 15 million primary school-age girls will never have the chance to learn to read and write in elementary school. Even today, education in Benin is an inaccessible right for nearly 1,600,000 school-age children.

This situation is due to poverty, conflicts, the absence of qualified schools or the geographical distance of the few existing schools, as well as the high cost of the few quality training courses that exist. This situation forces children and youth to drop out of school too early, which directly affects their abilities, competitiveness, and productivity and which makes them more vulnerable to poverty.

The target people whose lives we strive to directly and significantly improve live in Africa and currently only in Benin:

• Children between the ages of 5 and 12 (without distinction)
• Youth aged 12 to 14 years old
• Young people between 15 and 20 years old

Currently, only 3 out of 10 children and young people have access to education. Because of poverty, parents are often unable to pay the school fees of their children. Moreover, in rural areas there are almost no qualified schools and the few that do exist are too far from the needy learners.

Fortunately, on the one hand, by creating a kitty, a parent or a learner can collect money by inviting his relatives or acquaintances from all over the world or by making his kitty public, to mobilize the necessary funds for his schooling. On the other hand, a village chief or a charity organization can create a public kitty to raise the necessary funds for the construction of a qualified school in a village in Benin.

The results of our studies are based primarily on studies conducted by UNICEF, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM).

Also the statistics of the studies conducted by the World Bank on literacy in Africa and the results of the INSAE on the rate of unemployment and illiteracy in Benin, allowed us to understand the extent of the situation and to rework our target.

But we want to explain that the origin of this project comes from the decision taken by the author and head of the project to find a solution to access to quality education for all, after having been victims of this problem.

Our solution is currently in the prototype stage as our application is still under development and we have not yet completed all the modules that the application contains.
What we have accomplished, so far:

• The reformation of the idea and the development of the idea (through research and confrontations carried out)
• Logotype and graphic charter available
• Prototyping and realization of idea prototypes available (Flow Diagram, UML Diagram, Class Diagram)
• Demo version of the EtuPay web platform in French almost completed.

Online fundraising is a popular solution for individuals on many occasions to easily raise small amounts of money as well as large sums. From a common birthday gift to supporting a noble cause, existing platforms offer a variety of features depending on the needs. Here we specify this Fintech technology that already exists only for access to quality educational services and for the realization of educational projects.

Our mobile application is developed based on Flutter to have the Android version, and iOS, FireBase to host it in NoSQL and real-time databases, content, social authentication, and notifications, or real-time communication server services. As long as the web platform will be developed based on NodeJs in back-end and VueJs in front-end. A bit of AI to study the behavior of user-donors in front of fundraising ads.

We want to help at least 50,000 people in Benin in the first year through the EtuPay kitty. 

• 10,000 downloads of the mobile app.
• 100,000 visitors to the website.
• 10,000 sales made on the Market place.
• 20,000 Learners reached through educational projects of charities or schools (assuming 100 projects are covered at a rate of 200 learners per project).

In the second year, we would like to expand this project to all of Benin and reach 150,000 people through increased communications efforts, more marketing.
We hope that our efforts will create a domino effect and attract the attention of the national media, which would amplify the reach of our campaigns to millions of people throughout the country.

We hope that if we succeed in implementing our solution by July 2022, it will reach 1,600,000 school-age children and over 67% of the youth population. We want to help at least 50,000 people in Benin in the first year through the EtuPay kitty. 

 We have already done some interviews with organizations and experts and we hope that we will be able to solve this big problem and allow thousands of children and young people to have easy access to quality education. After one year we intend to give the necessary means to triple the figures of the previous year.
To do this, we plan to finalize as soon as possible the creation of our Web and Mobile application, SEO referencing, the marketing strategy to adopt.
Then, we will introduce the application to many charities, schools, learners, youths and universities in Benin, so that people can start creating or supporting kitchens. 
Looking for as many partners as possible
We will also promote our application to interested public figures who are willing to help us and who fit our community.

To measure our progress in the development of the project, we will refer to the level of progress of the project; since we have not yet launched our project, our team does not currently measure impact. In the future, we plan to measure our impact and progress through:

The number of downloads of the mobile app.
The number of visitors to our web platform.
The number of pledges created.
The number of funds supported.
The number of successful kitty's.
Testimonials and opinions of our users.
The interest of the press.
The variation of the literacy rate.
And so on.

Our bariers are among others:
Financial: 
This is a hurdle, as we need funds to be able to run the solution. 

Legal:

• Legal issues that can arise and be a barrier are:
• Licensing issues, security of payments.
• Advertising and marketing. 
• Data protection and privacy issues. 
• Protection of intellectual property rights. 
• Kitty management (make sure the kitty is relevant to avoid scams).

Threat of new entrants:
This is the occurrence of new competitors 

Threat of substitute products:
Substitute products represent an alternative to the offer we present

1. ANAGO Tinos Noé, software engineering student at IFRI-UAC, Google Cloud certified. Winner of the Young Entrepreneur Award (ERAS) organized by Access Agriculture. Certified Google Digital Marketing. Currently Lead of the Google Developer Student Club of University of Abomey-Calavi (GDSC - UAC).
2. DOSSOU Hymogène, Student in Software Engineering at IFRI-UAC. Community manager. And currently Co-lead of the Google Developer Student Club of Abomey-calavi (GDSC - UAC).

Etupay is currently in partnership with the GDSC of the University of Abomey-Calavi, in order to recruit intern developers ready to work on the project.

No we are not qualified for this prize

We are qualified for this challenge because our solution has a particular emphasis on equal opportunity and easy access to quality education for all, while putting girls and young women first.