Erandi Aprende

Through our venture we are bridging the gender gap in STEAM related areas by solving the low participation rates of girls and women in these fields. There are 3.25 billion girls under 25 years old worldwide. Although STEAM industries represent the careers of the future, less than 30% of these girls will engage in a STEAM related subject.

In Mexico, there are 25 million girls under the age of 25. 18.9 million of them still do not have access to STEAM education. Even those that do have access are unlikely to choose a career in STEAM due to conditioning of gender roles; academic deficiencies; limited STEAM content available in spanish;  a lack of knowledge of the prospects and opportunities available in these fields and not having an engaging and interactive first encounter with STEAM. Rural and peri-urban areas are generally the most affected by lack of resources and opportunities.

Through a series of surveys and interviews, we discovered that the main drivers behind women's lack of participation in STEAM are systemic gender biases which make girls choose not to study science and technology careers. In addition, many potential clients stated that most material was not engaging at all or the subjects taught were very abstract and they did not see any added value in being part of the STEAM world.  

According to the  Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Mexican students score below average in Math and Science related subjects, making it less likely for them to want to pursue a degree in the latter.

Therefore, we should prioritize access and providing a first life changing encounter with STEAM to all girls and young women. This will reduce the gender gap in the field and empower the girls to have a bright future.

Erandi Aprende is an online platform designed to offer STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) education to young girls and women) with the help of courses, experiment kits and resources focused on awakening an interest in science and technology from an early age in order to bridge the STEAM gender gap.

Based on the learnings we got from different material propose by  The MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten research group, we developed our own learning methodology (learn, build, invent) where we teach theoretical knowledge (called learn), then have a practical example on how to apply the latter (called build) and finally invite our students to put their new knowledge into practice by creating their own inventions (called invent). 

Hence, we ensure that girls and young women are learning through play, gamification and experimentation. We are developing our own "STEAMLand '' where every child feels welcome to learn and have fun with their personalized curriculum (based on personal hobbies linked to STEAM) and have fun regardless of their backgrounds, or the systemic or academic challenges they face.

We believe that having a one-time experiment and not following up is detrimental in an individual's learning development. Therefore children, parents and professors are able to access a personalized web based dashboard to see how much progress one has made. 

We provide tailor-made interactive and/or gamified education fit for all our users. Through providing our services, we have realized that gamified experiences are a great solution to encourage learning. Thus, learning by playing has become our new normal,  where knowledge acquisition is rewarded by earning points that can be later redeemed for other products in our "STEAMland". 

By being able to build connections between science and technology subjects, users’ hobbies, and everyday activities, we can help our users develop self-guided learning abilities, a passion for STEAM, and help them to clarify any doubts they might have from class. Furthermore, by allowing users to discover all the future possibilities they have by pursuing these careers, we can contribute towards triggering higher participation in these fields.  

Although our services focus on serving girls and young women we do not wanna recreate negative segregation patterns. Hence we run by the motto of serving girls without leaving boys behind. Up to date we have been able to serve 4000 young minds aged 8 - 12 through several collaborations with the science Museum Universum, the national childrens’ TV channel of Once Niñ@s, STEAM related companies such as Emerson or Samsung; and the local council on science and technology of the state of Hidalgo who donated 50 courses to girls from vulnerable backgrounds. Thus, helping bridge the accessibility gap that exists between urban and peri-urban areas. 

Our current customers are parents, tutors and relatives of children aged 8-12 years old based in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, as well as other cities in the country such as Tlaxcala, Queretaro, Guanajuato and Pachuca.  Our users and beneficiaries are children aged 8-12 years old based in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, as well as some other cities in the country such as Tlaxcala, Queretaro, Guanajuato and Pachuca. We have also attracted a student from Ecuador and another one from Peru. 

As mentioned beforehand, currently, these groups are underserved since most science and technology educational content is only available in English, thus, making it inaccessible for those who do not speak the English language. In Mexico only 12% of the entire population can speak English. Furthermore, most STEAM education providers focus on having one of the time experiences and do not offer any continuous programs or follow up system.

Our team is well positioned to deliver this solution since to begin with most of the team had to experience the hardship of being the only female representative in the room in different STEAM fields (Miroslava, Carmen and Zussie); or realizing that we chose not to undertake a career in these areas due to gender roles (Andrea and Sophie). This gap problem is something that has directly affected us and we want to ensure that future generations do not have to face the same challenges. 

Furthermore, our team has very diverse backgrounds. On the one hand, Miroslava being a software developer has developed our platform, Erandi Aprende, from scratch. Allowing us to iterate and personalize our solution as much as possible, based on the learnings from our various user testing. Furthermore she has taught the rest of the team how to manage simple tasks of the latter so everyone can contribute with development.

On the other hand, Andrea being a social scientist and having  been selected / completed several youth leadership and entrepreneurship programs such as Yunus and Youth LATAM Fellowship, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative; along with being a speaker at international education events such as RewireEd at Expo Dubai 2020, has allowed us as a tam to gain valuable exposition and PR experience. Due to this, we have been able to reach out to people from very diverse backgrounds including tech companies, local governments, international STEAM initiatives and schools. Likewise, Miroslava was able to establish contact with MIT Professor Dr. Abel Sánchez with whom we are collaborating on creating a blockchain course.

We believe that by involving most stakeholders (parents, children, educational staff, professors, government, STEAM companies, and women in STEAM) in the building of a sustainable solution we will be able to make them understand they are part of the problem and the solution to it.

We are applying to Solve to make our wildest dreams come true: help bridge the STEAM gender gap while working alongside the MIT network. Our social venture is composed of technology at its core and we have used MIT education methodologies to develop the latter. Thus, we are aware of the fact that having the support and knowledge from experts from MIT will allow us to continue developing our “STEAMland” with a more thorough and sound scope.

As our platform is in the pilot stage, sales funnel conversion rates, growing our team and community (that supports us in our efforts of developing "STEAMland"), product market fit and exploiting technology's potential remain our main concern. We believe that we would benefit from all the help provided by the Solve network to be able to build, grow and continue developing our business in order to reach more girls, support them to turn into remarkable STEAMers and ensure that the team becomes recognized in the STEAM e-learning domain.

Our solution is innovative since we are the first gender focused STEAM e-learning platform in Mexico that provides holistic education through a personalized curriculum.We are creating  a "STEAMLand '' where every child feels welcome to learn with their personalized curriculum (based on personal hobbies linked to STEAM) and have fun regardless of their backgrounds, or the systemic or academic challenges they face.

We developed our own teaching methodology based on the MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten which has the right balance between interactive, theoretical and practical learning (learn -> build -> invent) co-created by our team and community members including parents, education experts and women working or studying in STEAM. We believe that by involving most stakeholders in the building of a sustainable solution we will be able to make them understand they are part of the problem and the solution to it. 

This means there is not one size or methodology meant to work for everyone. On the contrary the hobbies and interests of each individual are different and so are their learning preferences. Therefore, we provide materials and content in various formats such as videos, audios, stories, printable activities, kits or DIYs to ensure that everyone is included and able to learn at their own pace, based on their preferences through the platform, live activities or workshops or our kits. Children, parents and professors are able to access a personalized web based dashboard to see how much progress one has made. 

We aim to not only have a one-time experiment and not follow up. We want to provide tailor-made interactive and/or gamified education fit for all our users. 

Our holistic impact learning process is also applicable to our collaborations, where we work with partners that can help us balance our theoretical with our practical knowledge on a local and global level. For instance, we are currently working with a “Chinampa” (small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on shallow lake beds in Mexico) to host a summer course on how to have more sustainable consumption habits through urban orchards. Thus, teaching children about food production, the life cycle of plants, flora exploration along with basic teaching of ecosystem loss and climate change. This would be our first hybrid course (theoretical content in our digital platform and hands-on activities at the Chinampa) which will connect children living in the city with traditional Mexican agricultural practices. 

On the other hand, we have been able to collaborate with the Salvadorian social venture STEM IN A BOX, which aims to teach STEM subjects through interactive robotics kits built from recycled materials. Not only are they already operating in Central America, but they have already tested their products in Nigeria and Kenya. With the aim of building our “STEAMland” we are helping them with the production and distribution of their kits in the Mexican market.

Currently we are serving around 4000 girls who have been actively involved with us through testing our prototypes, buying interactive courses or kits, participating in live workshops or activities, or by downloading free content available on the platform.

In the next five years we aim to impact girls and young women on a global scale; see that our current students continue to learn and have fun with the platform; are joining science fairs or clubs; having our content translated into different languages; and ensuring that more girls worldwide can use our services and fast-forward our mission to provide  engaging STEAM education in order to bridge the gender gap in said areas and help them become successful STEAMists.

Although we are aware that not every Erandi Aprende’s student will become an engineer or a scientist, our goal is to light a spark of STEAM knowledge in their minds, which will help them become critical thinkers and changemakers that wish to make the world a better place.

Our venture measures progress through our platform progress dashboard and points earned during courses; our annual uset roundup report;  measuring our attrition rate; observing average course experience from survey results including attendance, participation and engagement; completion of courses and overall grades; creation of own inventions after gaining theoretical and practical knowledge; as well as observing if there is an increase in involvement in science subjects or science and technology activities or projects.

Likewise, we measure our impact by seeing an increase of our Erandi Aprende’s Youth Ambassadors, a program designed to follow up with our students who are now inviting other fellow peers to join Erandi Aprende's STEAM Universe. This follow up consists of understanding how their learning experience has been transformative and why should someone else follow this path.

If Erandi Aprende's learn through play ecosystem provides quality and engaging science and technology education with the help of resources, programs, and experiment kits in Spanish to all Latin American girls, whilst triggering their passion and involvement in STEAM areas and we are able to offer them a supportive environment where they can have a first life changing encounter with these areas, then we will be able to help them gain confidence in STEAM related subjects and develop problem solving and critical thinking skills that will equip them to become active participants in the science and technology world. This is linked to our long-term vision: empower girls to become the next generation of women in STEAM while tackling systemic gender roles which remain the main obstacle towards bridging the gender gap in these fields. 

If we provide this variety of STEAM resources through a digital platform, then we will be able to reach a larger number of girls and young women interested in these areas regardless of their interests or backgrounds. 

In the end, women represent almost half of the world's population and economy and seeing a higher participation rate in STEAM areas would involve greater benefits for everyone.

To test these assumptions, we have presented our platform to girls ages 8 to 18. Our results show that even girls who formerly thought that STEAM fields were not for them changed their attitude towards these subjects and felt motivated to learn more about them.

Therefore, we should prioritize access and providing a first life changing encounter with STEAM to all girls and young women. This will reduce the gender gap in the field and empower the girls to have a bright future.

We built the first prototype as a web application with Laravel using PHP programming language and MySQL to store data. 

In 2021 we decided to migrate our main website (and its landing pages, blog, general information, digital store) to a CMS that the whole team could operate, including those who are not coders. In the same way, we are gradually migrating our PHP Laravel application to React Js.

The next step is to build a system that can learn from users and generate personalized recommendations using machine learning algorithms. This will be developed using python and rust as programming languages. 

We are still developing “Erandi”, an intelligent System that uses predictive and adaptive algorithms in order to discover how our users prefer to learn. This will also tell us what content our users prefer to learn and allow us to recommend resources that show the union between their interests and science, technology engineering and math. 

Our aim is to be able to include as many people as possible, this being girls in urban, peri-urban or rural contexts, people with disabilities, indigenous people and other minorities. So far, we have been able to impact the lives of 50 girls from vulnerable backgrounds through the scholarships provided by the local government to them. 

Besides, we have collaborated with an organization (called Enseña) dedicated to developing content for deaf people and using Mexican Sign Language to teach different subjects. At this time we created a video explaining the origin of eukaryotic cells. In Mexico deaf people do not have easy access to content going beyond primary education level. That is why we are looking forward to continuing working with Enseña. 

Furthermore, the name of our project / Avatar and AI is Erandi. Erandi is an indigenous name from the Mexican Purepecha people. This name means awakening and thus refers to our student's awakening in STEAM while keeping in mind indigenous groups which are usually underserved.

In the future we wish to have a better understanding of impact measurement tools in order to be able to include people from more diverse backgrounds as we currently are mainly relying on people living in major Mexican metropolitan areas. 

Likewise, our team (composed of 7 members) is inclusive since it has almost a perfect balance between males and females. In our case we have a female majority since all 4 co-founders are female and one of us is a member of the LQBTQ+ community.

During summer 2021 we created an internship program allowing women interested in these fields to help peers gain access to the STEAM world. Said practices would allow them to join our sorority network and provide them with professional experience while helping empower others.

Mexico has a population of 128.9 million inhabitants of which 25.3% of the population are children. 71.45% of Mexicans have access to the internet and on average they spend 9 hours a day using the internet. All in all, parents wish that their children are able to make the most out of the time their kids spend in front of a screen.

We created Erandi Aprende with the aim to provide holistic fun, interactive and inclusive STEAM education to parents and teachers looking to engage children in science and technology areas. 

Our venture makes money by two means. We mainly focus on a B2C model where we sell courses ($10 USD - $25 USD), modules and kits ($15 USD - $75 USD) to parents, tutors and/or relatives of girls and boys aged 8-12 years old. Likewise we provide courses for adults explaining the benefits of STEAM subjects, and on how to motivate children to join STEAM areas.

On the other hand, we use a B2B model where we invite school professors, education staff, local governments or technology related institutions to use our content as complementary material to their curriculum or as fun after school activities. So far we have only tested this model once where we sold a lot of 50  $25 USD courses to a local government in the State of Hidalgo, who donated the latter to girls coming from vulnerable backgrounds.

Furthermore, we are open to create content on request or adapt the school's or STEAM related institution’s content to our platform in order to make it much more interactive and personalized for children. Likewise, we have done this once with the multinational Emerson Chapter Mexico City and Guadalajara where we co-designed two live workshops on the Internet Of Things (IOT), and another one on algorithm usage while solving a Rubix cube. We did this free of charge to test this model. Currently we are working on creating material for a school named Central Christian Institute which wishes to provide its students with new STEAM related activities. 

Through our content collaboration system we are able to develop educational material with education and / or professionals in STEAM subjects, or distribute material already created by the latter. Thus, this has enabled us to continue building “STEAMland” at a faster pace. When content is developed under said model we either get a commission to distribute the content provided, or pay the expert collaborator a certain percentage of the sales revenue.

Thanks to this business model combination, we are able to have diverse revenue streams.

So far we have been able to acquire our first clients through our combined business model including B2C, B2B and collaborations. We consider that towards the end of next year we will be able to be financially sustainable by combining sales strategies of our virtual and physical products and courses as well as distributing the content from collaborators. Likewise selling others products and services of STEAM related groups and thus, approaching our vision of building "STEAMland".

In the future, when our web traffic increases we would like to explore a publisher option to also create another stream of revenue.

In the past year we earned 842 USD through course sales. 

We also won two different contests obtaining a total of 19,710 USD in prize money from: (1) Youth Challenge 2.0 from UNICEF, UNDP, Plan International, Irish Aid, and the Scouts; 2) Innovatón Nosotrxs en Acción from Google México, the Secretary of Economy and Makesense México.