ELNavigator

Children and adolescents today live in a world of challenges and opportunities, including new technologies, changing labour markets, migration, conflict, and environmental and political changes. To succeed within this current and future environment, they need access to education that develops skills, knowledge, attitudes and values and enables them to become successful life-long learners who can learn, un-learn, and relearn; find and retain productive work; make wise decisions; and positively engage in their communities.

By 2030, an estimated 825 million children are expected to leave school without basic level skills. (The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World, ICFGEO, New York, 2016)

Already today, some 40 percent of employers globally are finding it difficult to recruit people with the skills they need - the ability to acquire new skills throughout life, to adapt and to work flexibly will be at a premium. If education in much of the world fails to keep up with these changing demands, there will be major shortages of skilled workers as well as large surpluses of workers with poor skills (The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World, ICFGEO, New York, 2016)

39% of employers in nine diverse countries (including high income countries) claim that a leading reason for entry level vacancies in diverse economies is due in part to a skills shortage. (McKinsey & Company, Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works, 2012) 

Across the globe, about 500 million youth are unemployed, underemployed or working in insecure jobs, often in the informal sector, and 255 million (21%) youth in the developing world—three quarters of them women—are not in employment, education or training (NEET) 

Transferable skills, also known as life skills, 21st century skills, soft skills, or socio-emotional skills allow children and adolescents to become agile, adaptive learners and citizens equipped to navigate personal, academic, social and economic challenges. Transferable skills also support crisis-affected children to cope with trauma and build resilience in the face of adversity. Transferable skills include problem solving, negotiation, managing emotions, empathy and communication, among others and they work alongside knowledge and values to connect, reinforce, and develop other skills and build further knowledge. Within this construct, they are the central ‘magic glue,‘ connecting, reinforcing, and developing other skills (foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, digital skills and job-specific skills). (https://www.unicef.org/reports/global-framework-transferable-skills)

Despite significant global efforts, transferable skills are not developed progressively or at scale for all children and adolescents, whether in or out of school. Most governments have ambitious whole-sector policies and plans in place to develop these skills, often guided by a national vision for economic and social development, but implementation remains a challenge. Out of 152 surveyed countries, 117 include transferable skills within national policy documents, and 71 include transferable skills within curriculum, but only 18 define the learning standards to ensure the development of these skills across different age/grade levels. (https://www.unicef.org/reports/global-framework-transferable-skills)

Without action, this learning crisis will significantly slow progress toward reaching the most fundamental of all development goals: ending extreme poverty

The primary reason for the lack of scale in building these skills is that they are not easy to 'teach'.

• “Teaching” life skills in children requires the use of a child-centred experiential pedagogy

• Unlike Mathematics, Social Sciences, Languages, Sciences, etc, there are almost no effective standard curricula and textbooks to teach life skills.

• Every child and every group of children is unique. To achieve effective outcomes, teachers have to tailor teaching content and facilitation to suit each specific situation. A  ‘one size fits all’ curriculum cannot be used.

Developing life skills in children and adolescents requires very experienced and highly skilled teachers/facilitators, which is difficult to develop at scale. This is even more so the case in small towns and villages where the need is greater. Further, life skills can only be developed through a holistic approach that involves the parents, school teachers, and community members who all play an important role in creating the right experiential environment for the children to grow in. Current school processes do not have the methods and processes to extensively engage and involve the broader set of stakeholders, making it hard for these skills to be inculcated effectively.

To ensure that our programs can be scaled to very quickly reach a large number of children across the developing world and to reach and impact children in small towns and villages, we have have worked on two important innovations - (1) a teaching methodology with unique curriculum content and format that allows for a high degree of customization without needing extensive knowledge and experience, and (2) a software platform that makes it easy to deploy the curriculum and collect data to validate the outcomes and provide immediate feedback to the teachers as well as the broader set of stakeholders.

Using well-researched pedagogies, we have developed a customizable curriculum that consists of a standard lesson format and a library of standard components. Each lesson consists of 5 components - an opening exercise, a technical skills development section, an experiential workshop, and a reflection and debrief session. Each component is tied to a technical skill, a life skill, and a level in our 6-year progression. In  addition, there is also a library of asynchronous assignments that are connected to the lesson components. Based on the situation of each group of children, the teacher is able to first “assemble/configure” a session by mixing and matching components, and is then able to customize both the content and the pedagogy to suit the specific situation. The teacher also chooses the appropriate asynchronous assignment for the children to do at home based on how the session went. The customizations to the components and the “assembled” lesson plan become part of a repository of data which is used later to either enhance the existing components or create new components. 

Over the past few years, we have developed a strong and effective 6-year curriculum with lesson plan components that follow a very structured progression and focus on well-defined outcomes for each level. These components have been tested by our teachers in their sessions, and the results have been corroborated through our skills assessment rubric.

We have now developed a software platform that has the following modules (a) Component Library, pre-assembled lesson plans, and an asynchronous assignment library, (b) Batch creation tool - linking the teacher, the children, their school, their parents, and the donor to each batch of children, (c) Data collection tool consisting of student assessments, session reporting and session observation - these are filled by teachers and teacher mentors respectively and allow for data collection and analysis which then allows us to enhance the component and assignment libraries as well as optimize teacher instructions, (d) a process workflow that guides the teacher to pick the right components and make the appropriate customizations and (e) communication tool connecting the teacher, the children, the parents, school teachers and other stakeholders.

The platform is  designed for quality checks at various stages. Once a teacher/coach configures a lesson plan, their Program Manager/Mentor is able to give feedback/suggestions and ‘approve’ the lesson plan remotely. This support is especially critical for new teachers/coaches. The teachers and coaches then execute the lessons in under-resourced schools. The platform monitors progress through session report forms which are filled out after each session. We look at student attendance, curriculum completion, and student assessments to help track student progress and keep parents updated on their children’s growth.  Dashboards then allow us to examine various metrics and course correct where required.

A tablet is issued to each of our teachers to enable easier access to the platform - both for the lesson plan configuration and the session reporting and observations. We have also required teachers to periodically upload videos of the sessions along with session data.  We currently have data being collected from 900 sessions every week; this will keep expanding as our outreach grows. We plan to incorporate AI to analyze the forms and videos to be able to recommend the next set of lesson configurations that would be the most appropriate for the development of the children. 

The software platform is accessible to parents, school teachers and key community stakeholders. Parents and school teachers will be able to review the student assessments as well as the asynchronous assignments. The messaging and communications module allows the EL teacher to connect with the various stakeholders and provide suggestions on how they might be able to support the development of their child as well as the children in the batch. 

The platform also collects data on session quality and makes it possible for teachers to get frequent feedback from their mentors. This helps to build capacity and constantly improve session quality and outcomes and can be done without extensive resources.

We work with students in urban slums and rural areas where they do not have access to quality education that prepares them for the future. Inequity in education severely affects these children’s future, more so for girls.

Our solution serves young adolescent girls and boys (9-15 years old) enrolled in government and low-income private schools. The children in rural areas come mainly from families where parents are farm labourers,  small land owners or are in other low-paid unskilled labour. In the urban areas, most of the students' parents are construction workers, drivers and security guards, household help, and street vendors.  Students are from low-income families below the poverty line. Most students are first generation learners, where both parents are either illiterate or have not pursued education beyond 4th grade. Patriarchy is a cultural way of life with girls and boys treated differently and girls taking a back seat when it comes to education and advancement. Adolescent girls fall prey to early marriage, and teenage pregnancy rates are high. Secondary studies tell us that about 40% of marriages and child births take place before girls turn 18 in rural Karnataka.

Our students attend highly under-resourced schools which are not equipped to provide  quality education and prepare them for the future. These have access neither to a good academic foundation (www.asercentre.org for India)) nor to music, sports, arts, etc that help them gain holistic growth. Many children drop out of school, but those that complete their schooling lack foundational literacy and 21st century skills critical for them to succeed. 

Currently, we reach 9,000 students across urban and rural India and rural Cambodia. Innovative experiential programs (using sports, music and Lego) like ours are unknown in the schools we work in and can be game changing for the students and their families. Impact studies show that our students have developed high levels of initiative and motivation to do well, self-awareness and empathy towards others, confidence to take calculated risks, ability to present their thoughts and thrive in situations of uncertainty. During Covid in 2020-21, particularly, when none of our students could attend school due to school closures, our students showed all the above traits throughout our online engagement with them. 

Our innovative programs use Music, Football and Lego as mediums to engage 9-15 year olds. Each program, while engaging and fun, is carefully designed to enable children to collaborate, reflect, and connect first-hand experiences/learnings from the classroom/playground with their real lives. Our curriculum, experiential pedagogy and the blended learning model using interactive lesson plan content, workshops and projects over a 6-year period, teach students to become excellent problem-solvers, positive community contributors and global citizens. With our software application, we will be able to reach several more students studying in low-income schools in South and Southeast Asia.  

The biggest gaps in our student beneficiaries are:

a) Economic stability and coming out of the poverty they and their families are trapped in

b) Inclusivity, social justice and sensitivity to all forms of discrimination

c) To have community leadership 

Our programs aim to fill the above gaps and empower alumni to be role models, problem solvers and global citizens.

With 8 years of experience developing and implementing our programs, our team has the skills and experience necessary to deploy our solution. This includes medium-specific (music, football, play) expertise, teaching and facilitation expertise, teacher training expertise, program management, and impact measurement. In addition, we have hired staff from the Corporate sector who bring extensive experience in HR, Finance, Legal and Partnerships Management functions.

Our teachers and coaches are at the heart of our program and make up a large proportion of our staff (115 out of 153). Most of them either come  directly from the communities we serve or from similar backgrounds. Many of our teachers are alumni of our programs. This helps them understand the contexts of our students and customize sessions accordingly. 

Our Program development team and Program Managers have several years of education, life skills development, and curriculum development experience. They are also experts in each of the mediums we use. Most of them have been with the organization since its inception.

The Leadership team has experience ranging from 10-30 years and from varying backgrounds - social development, research and corporate.

We have developed efficient and scalable processes, a robust organizational structure, and a people development model focused on building talent and culture.

While there is growing awareness that Life Skills/Transferable skills/21st century skills have become increasingly critical to inculcate specially in underserved children, there isn't widespread knowledge and understanding of how to go about solving this problem. Governments have incorporated this as a focus area into their policies but the tactical plans lack implementation details. Further, there isn’t enough recognition of the need for teacher training and support to effectively teach these skills. Innovation in the so-called ‘Ed-tech” space has been largely focused on Language and knowledge-based subjects such as Math, Science, etc. 

This presents a unique set of challenges for Enabling Leadership, while at the time, opening up a host of opportunities to solve these problems.

We need help in the following areas: 

(a) Software development: While we have developed what we believe is a very unique application, we do not have the necessary expertise to incorporate the use of AI specially as it relates to using audio-visual data, data collected in the form of verbal and written feedback in multiple languages, etc. There are several enhancements we would like to build into this platform and getting expert support for this will be very valuable.

(b) Collaboration to enhance soft-skills measurement: Most of the rubrics in use today rely on student self assessment or teacher assessments. But standard tests are only partly effective and do not capture cultural nuances. The most effective data is gathered when students are presented with situations and observed in groups. We have developed these tools, but scaling this will require further innovation.

(c) Developing scalable deployment models: Today, we have chosen a direct intervention model with our own teachers, trainers and program staff. This has allowed us to both innovate and ensure quality outcomes. We believe that a combination of partnering with governments, corporations and large foundations, and development sector organizations for both funding and implementation planning and resources will allow for effective roll-out across many countries, but this model needs to be developed and tested.

- Child-centric mediums that use team sports, performing arts and STEAM education and a teaching framework to inculcate critical life skills and leadership skills in underserved children in urban slums and rural areas

- Unique and tested curriculum content and format that allows for a high degree of customization without needing extensive knowledge and experience

- A software platform that makes it easy to deploy the customized curriculum and collect data to validate the outcomes and provide immediate feedback to the teachers as well as the broader set of stakeholders.

These 3 key innovations can help scale our programs in reach and in impact, and can be game changing for millions of children enabling them to be global citizens who are 'future ready'.

In 2023-24, our goals are:

- Expand our reach and impact 20,000 children

- Increase our reach in Cambodia

- Add 2 new countries in Southeast Asia

- Increase the proportion of our rural reach to at least 30%

- Complete the pilot of our software platform

In the next 5 years, our goals are:

- Reach and impact 100,000 children

- Add at least 3 more countries in South-Asia/South-East Asia

- Roll-out the software platform as a standard tool for all our program work

- Complete and deploy enhancements to the software platform, including the integration assessment metrics and of AI to predictively recommend session plans and pedagogy and to integrate self learning and guidance on how to conduct effective sessions.

- Develop and roll-out an Alumni program to formalize the hiring of students from our program to become teachers

- Develop implementation partnerships to be able to scale our outreach

Our goal is to bring our tech-enabled leadership programs to a million under-served children across Asia by 2030 and develop essential leadership skills to thrive in an unknown future . Key outcome indicators for us would be that youth from low-income backgrounds:

• work towards a sustainable and productive future for themselves

• consistently make responsible choices, and 

• collaborate with others to solve problems and better their communities and world

The software application, with customizable lesson planning, student databases, etc. can help us reach students in remote areas of Asia. The application gives us the capability to empower local staff who may not necessarily have the skills or experience to 'teach' life skills as teachers and coaches. We believe the application backed by our well-researched teaching content will help teachers and coaches conduct high quality outcome-oriented sessions.

With time, the application will have the potential to develop AI capability, based on data usage of more than 200 teachers and coaches in the current version. The analysis of this data should enable us to develop a predictive model (machine learning algorithm) that would throw up suggestions to our teachers and coaches on which lesson plan components they should use based on their specific classroom situation. This would be game changing, especially in the leadership and life skills development space for underserved children - an area where content and experience is very limited.

Our program is a 6-year program broken into 3 levels of leadership skill development. Based on this logic Model, we have developed impact indicators for Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6. We use a basket of evaluation tools as below to measure progress towards our goals at each level:

• Teacher/coach assessment of every student through specific ‘assessment activities’ during specific times of the program to track student progress

• Group interaction of a sample of random sample of students to measure impact of specific indicators related to student learning and growth

• Student survey (using statements and vignettes) of all students

• Parent and teacher (random sample) interviews to get 360-degree inputs on program impact 

Below are some key Impact indicators that we measure:

% girls and boys that have identified career/education/family/personal goals for themselves 

% girls and boys who have an action plan towards achieving their career/education/family/personal goals 

% girls and boys who provide examples of decisions/actions they have made based on analysis of impact 

% girls and boys who set high standards for themselves 

% girls and boys that recover quickly and easily from obstacles and failures that they experience 

% girls and boys who take actions to better their community/world 

% girls and boys that are able to explain the potential/actual impact of their actions on self, others and the environment 

To keep track of implementation targets, below are our Process and Reach Indicators:

# of young adolescents enrolled in our programs

% of boys and girls enrolled in our programs

% of enrolled boys and girls attending at least 75% sessions

# of enrolled boys and girls submitting home assignments virtually

% of enrolled boys and girls participating in Enabling Leadership events (projects, league matches, music concerts and Lego showcases)

% of student homes visited by our teachers/coaches (physically or virtually) 

Our Theory of Change is rooted in proven studies on the leadership skills that help children thrive, the most appropriate mediums to gain those skills, the most appropriate pedagogy that facilitate leadership skills learning, gaps in modern education, and our own beliefs as an organization. 

Following are the core elements of our theory of change, which, we believe, will enable children to develop strong belief systems, excellent problem solving skills and a keen sense of awareness and responsibility - the three main traits of a leader:

1) Reach children in the appropriate age group: 9-15 year old adolescents (most vulnerable formative age group) from low income backgrounds 

2) Reach students of government schools which cater to the children from the lowest economic backgrounds and which provide a stable structure for us to reach children in a sustained manner 

3) Connect first-hand experiences/learnings from the classroom/playground with their real lives to ensure these behaviors/habits become permanent. 

4) Engage children for a sustained Intervention: 6 years (Grade 4 through Grade 9) because developing leadership skills takes time to be explored, developed and internalized in students 

5) Use innovative and effective mediums that facilitate experiential learning: Arts (music), Sports (football), Play (Lego)

6) Use experiential pedagogy and learning methodologies, the key components of which are:

• Learning by doing’ - by being a responsible team member of a music group, football team or Lego group and connecting first-hand experiences/learnings from the classroom/playground with their real lives to ensure these behaviors/habits become permanent. 

• Encouraging and creating a safe space for students to express and share ideas, emotions, opinions through team talks and journaling 

• Give positive constructive feedback and appreciation 

• Provide opportunities for students to take on different roles during group activities, etc., lead part of an activity or full activity, co-create sessions with teachers, lead projects, etc. Create strong class and team cultures 

• Emphasise on discipline, respect, inclusion and non-discrimination, especially breaking gender-stereotyping 

• Encourage students to imagine and thinking out of the box 

• Facilitate peer-to-peer learning, healthy competition and learning from failure 

• Facilitate reflection through team talks, journaling, etc. 

• Create safe, child-friendly and fun learning spaces

7) An ecosystem that allows children to learn and grow: Strong relationship-building with parents and caregivers, school teachers, and connects into the local community and government authorities 

8) Investment and focus on developing our teachers and coaches to conduct highly effective sessions through training and year-round mentoring 

9) On-going research and innovation in curriculum design, session content, facilitation methods and program delivery

The core technology underlying our solution is the "Codifying of the program." Mediums such as Team Sports, the Arts and Free Play are well-researched and proven to be ideally suited to inculcate Leadership Skills/Life Skills/soft skills. But there isn't a standard methodology to be able to teach these skills. Examples from other fields are the "Kumon" system for reading, writing and math or the "Russian School of Ballet" for ballet. The characteristics of a "codified program" include a standard curriculum content, a well defined and measurable progression, a well-defined pedagogy and standardized teaching tools and training. This allows a program to be rolled out at scale. However, this is difficult to do for Life Skills education because the teaching content and methodology is intrinsically experiential and therefore, situational. Our technology solves this problem by "codifying" our program using standard components that can be used to customize the content and pedagogy, and by using real-time feedback on session execution and student progress to assess the situation. The components and the framework make it easy to customize which then allows the program to scale. Rolling such a "codified program" would be hard without the use of technology to allow the almost infinite combination of session configurations and modern techniques that can analyze large sets of visual and verbal data, which is what the software platform is designed to be able to do.

We have developed a comprehensive Values and Culture handbook to develop the type of work environment that embodies the very same Leadership Skills Framework that we want to instil in our children. Some of the key areas incorporated in our work are:

• Equal pay for equal work and opening work opportunities equally to all, irrespective of their gender, colour, religion, background, etc. We have staff members from various religions, language backgrounds, regions, genders and age groups. 

• Equal and fair growth opportunities within the organization for every individual, irrespective of identity-based attributes. Several of our Program Managers are youngsters who started with us as part-time teachers and coaches and showed the potential and commitment  

• Various safeguarding policies in place to ensure safety and security for all within the organization. Some of these include POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) Policy, CPC (Child Protectioin Policy), Social Media Policy, and Prevention of Online Child Safety (POCSO) Policy.   

• Currently working with a Safeguarding and Inclusion Consultant who is vetting our policies to help us become stronger in these areas

• Gender and mental health modules included in our curriculum for students

• Gender and mental health training for our staff by experts in the field

• Ensuring that every batch of student has an equal number of girls and boys to enable both genders to learn from each other and grow together

The Leadership team at Enabling Leadership has a diverse background - age groups, educational background and work experience, economic levels as well as gender.

The key elements of our Business Model are:

* Key Resources (What resources will you need to run your activities? People, finance, access?)

- Teachers and Coaches trained in our curriculum & pedagogy, Curriculum and experts and teacher trainers and community workers

- Funds (from corporates, foundations, campaigns and individuals) for program staffing and material program costs

- Devices and technology 

* Partners & Key Stakeholders (Who are the essential groups you will need

to involve to deliver your programme? Do you need special access or permissions?)

- Parents of school-going adolescents in the 9-15 year age group, from underprivileged backgrounds

- Government Education departments

- Government schools and low-income private schools

- Corporate CSRs, Foundations, Individuals, Volunteers

- Highly motivated and committed team of program and operations staff

* Key Activities (What programme and non-programme activities will your organisation be carrying out?)
- Partnership development with key stakeholders, particularly partner schools

- Hiring of staff, particularly teachers/coaches

- Training teachers/coaches

- Material sourcing and distribution to students and partner schools

- Conducting sessions twice a week, round the year

- Organising student showcases and matches, which students work towards 

- Student assessments and parent engagement

* Type of Intervention (What is the format of your intervention? Is it a workshop? A service? A product?)
- A Service that is offered to students in under-resourced schools. Depending on our partnership with schools, we run our programs as in-school or after-school programs

Channels (How are you reaching your users and customers?)
- Through partnerships with government education department and low-income schools where we deploy trained teachers and coaches

Segments (Who benefits from your intervention)

- Early adolescents (9-15 years)

- Boys, girls, all genders

- Studying in under-resourced low-income schools in urban slums and rural areas

* Value Proposition

Our programs empowers early adolescents, a highly impressionable age group - to develop critical life skills and leadership skills that will prepare them to be role models, excellent problem solvers and global citizens. Most of all, it prepares them to be 'future ready'.

* Impact Measures (How will you show that you are creating social impact?)

- Outcome indicators based on our Logic Model are measured through a set of custom-built impact measurement tools

- Reach and other output indicators are measured through various monitoring tools

(Our measures have been outlined in more detail in a previous question)

* Cost Structure (What are your biggest expenditure areas? How do they change as you scale up?)

- Staffing

- Program material and equipment

* Revenue (Revenue sources)

- 100% funded through corporate CSR, Foundation grants, Individual donations, HNI donations and fundraising campaigns

We usually expand our outreach through Corporate and Foundation Grants. This allows us to progressively increase the number of children in our existing locations and take our program to new locations.  At the same time, we reach out to potential individual donors to sponsor the existing children in our programs through a recurring monthly donation. Most of our institutional grants are for a 2-3 year period, which allows us to build up the base of individual donors who ensure that we can complete the 6-year curriculum for all the children we bring in.

We split each of our batches into two groups of 10 children each, which we define as a “team” - while the 2 teams of 10 work together in their twice-weekly sessions as a batch, they participate in the year-end events in their respective teams.

We ask an individual donor to sponsor as many children as they want to at $10/month/child and $100/month/team. Using our software platform, we can connect individual donors to a batch. With a login, the donor is able to access regular updates on the batch and the team’s participation at the  year-end events. This creates a connection between the donor and the children and provides the donor with real-time feedback on the recurring donations.

We also approach senior Corporate executives to help us build a corpus to manage our non-program costs. Most senior executives who believe in our cause understand and appreciate the importance of organisational capacity development and are willing to support this build-up. 

A number of Corporate Sponsors and Foundations have given us multi-year grants:

Institution Name    Number of Children                Time Period

Credit Suisse                 2,000                        2018 - 2020 (3 Years)

Sony Music                    1,500                        2019 - 2022 (3 Years)

Intralox                           400                         2019 - 2021 (2 Years)

ASICS                              200                        2019 - 2021 (2 years)

We now have about 150 teams supported by team sponsors - i.e., donors who give us at least  $100/month. In addition, we also have about 750 individual donors who sponsor between 1-5 children each on a recurring basis. This number has grown exponentially over the last 3 years and we hope to keep building momentum.

We have also built up a Corpus of $100,000 till date