ROCS Software Suite (Pop-Up + ROCS)

The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has rocked Black and Brown communities. Perhaps the hardest hit has been students of color. From K-12 to post-secondary education, students of color have had their paths to graduation disrupted. According to UNICEF, "In the U.S., learning losses have been observed in many states including Texas, California, Colorado, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland. In Texas, for example, two-thirds of children in grade 3 tested below their grade level in math in 2021, compared to half of the children in 2019." (COVID:19 Scale of education loss ‘nearly insurmountable’, UNICEF Media factsheet, 23 January 2022.”)

In 2020, 10% of all Black and Latino college students planned on dropping out at the secondary level, and almost a third of Black and Latino students were prevented from going on to pursue graduate degrees. Of course, these are just short-term insights, as one can imagine that the long-term impacts of these harsh statistics will be felt in the workplace and across various industries for the next decade to come. (Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, Taemin Ahn ,A Change of Plans: How the Pandemic Affected Students of Color and their Plans for Higher Education)

Of course, these problems didn't just happen overnight. Low-income students face numerous challenges. America's stark racial inequality sees the achievement gaps among black, Hispanic, and white students, "completely accounted for" by the poverty level of students in a school, as measured by the percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals.

Yet, we live during a time when accessing knowledge is as simple as a click of a button. Unfortunately, many institutions serving low-income students are overburdened by the lack of resources, improperly prepared staff, and language and culture barriers. We aim to reduce the barriers that prevent faculty and staff from providing personalized attention. Still utilizing old closed technology and based on giant monolithic platforms that don't integrate with other applications, many academic institutions are trapped in the old way of doing things because of limited technology and the lack of time. We are changing that one user at a time.

ROCS' text first messaging platform allows users to have customized and personalized conversations with their audiences...at scale. Whether communicating about curriculum updates or sending automated reminders about enrollment deadlines, ROCS' tools cut through the noise, deliver personalized messages, track engagement across multiple channels, and, most importantly, communicate in a familiar and culturally responsive voice.

We amplify connections and seamlessly integrate them into other applications that serve students and low-income communities. Built on the latest, Amazon Web Services (Dynamo DB, Amplify, CloudFront, Route 53, S3) and Twilio (Sendgrid SMS) cloud-based technologies, ROCS is able to integrate into learning management systems, Google suite, and most technologies used in today's classroom. As students make their way through the day (or don't… because they never signed in),  ROCS tracks engagement and is prepared to send personalized potential communication updates depending on where students and parents are at on the journey.

Currently, our ability to track engagement, personalize conversations, and distribute them to live agents and teammates is helping academic counselors improve enrollment at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. For example, during the pandemic, counselors at Wilberforce College increased enrollment by 17% for the Spring Semester. For years, the university has relied on traditional methods to communicate with its students; however, our software allowed its administrators to help students on their academic journey by providing critical personalized information during the pandemic. In the future, we will enhance our ability to engage students across all campus levels as we strengthen our ability to deploy AI and machine learning features.

ROCS helps our users communicate directly with their audiences. It cuts through the noise and chatter of social media. It helps users be nimble enough to get around other big problems like limited access to the Internet, low tech adoption rates, busy schedules, and global pandemics. Sometimes, big problems can be solved by simple solutions like text messages, especially when a culturally relevant team is driving the tech behind it. (Of course, you can still send emails and soon update your social media pages through ROCS Tools). 

There are many reasons why more academic institutions should move to use text-first messaging tools. Perhaps, because it is the most effective way to communicate, especially to young audiences and communities of color.   ROCS' empowers parents and students to stay connected via the most effective way to communicate. By integrating into faculties and administrators' existing tools, we can enhance the power of their communications by providing personalized communications that improve users' experiences. Our multi-channel approach frees up time for administrators by increasing engagement (up to all texts are read in the first 15 minutes), helps parents cut through bureaucracy, and empowers students.

We believe that our solution will be especially effective in low-income, rural and urban communities, especially those that have low levels of access to technology.

We are best suited to solve this problem because, as Black and Brown technologists, we live at the intersection of tech and culture. We are comprised of parents, educators, university administrators, and technologists who live in the communities we serve.

We built our MVP after years of providing solutions to a national network of Black and Brown grassroots community and civic engagement organizations that serve this challenge’s target communities. We’ve hosted inceptions with church moms, college administrators, high school educators, and anti-violence activists. Besides our work on HBCUs and community colleges, this past year, we’ve also tested our features by helping national and community-based organizations fight back against vaccine hesitancy, NGOS get the word out about federal broadband subsidies, and rappers get the word out about early voting. In short, we are already partnering with those who are tackling some of our nation’s biggest social problems.

We also have a strong tech background. Our teammates have worked in fintech as software engineers, worked as client principals for global custom software agencies, and provided technical support for the largest civic tech organizations. 

Finally, we believe that tech is culture. Voice, content, and design matter just as much as the technology And while many tech firms are building smart and effective ways to communicate, our background as educators, digital navigators and cultural influencer sees us better prepared to tackle this issue than most.  

We want to change the world. But as technologists of color, who work in the midwest, we are often at the margins of important conversations. Working with Solve and its powerful network of stakeholders will validate our work and ideas it will also push us to think about solutions that we've never imagined before.

We need a community that has our back and challenges us, and we want to work with others who are thinking about solving huge problems.

While access to investment is important, we also believe that our solution can have an impact one client and partner at a time.

We are a team of Black and Brown technologists building solutions on the latest cloud-based services. Our ability to infuse tech and culture sees us building tools that are more cultural relevant and personified with voices that are more relevant to our target audience.

We aim to run a beta of our MVP in three - five K-12 elementary schools in Milwaukee this fall.  We aim to launch during the summer enrollment period.  We have close relationships with area principals and believe that the adoption of our technology by a few key influencers will see the district using it.

This year we were tracking increases in enrollment on HBCU campuses.  But we also are tracking"

1. Number of clients served

1. Number of conversations had using our platform
2. Number of action pages created
3. Number of tech novices using our tools

We believe that a black and brown led software company that puts the power of the latest technology in the hands of everyday people can change the world.

We also believe that our work will inspire more people like us to get involved in tech.

We amplify connections and seamlessly integrate them into other applications that serve students and low-income communities.  Built on the latest, Amazon Web Services (Dynamo DB, Amplify, CloudFront, Route 53, S3) and Twilio (Sendgrid SMS) cloud-based technologies, ROCS is able to integrate into learning management systems, Google suite, and most technologies used in today’s classroom. As students make their way through the day (or don’t… because they never signed in),  ROCS tracks engagement and is prepared to send personalized potential communication updates depending on where students and parents are at on the journey. 

We are a black and brown led team.

We work with community based organizations and local governments who have large target audiences of 100k lists.  We have been able to grow by expanding our client offering to smaller organizations who may need custom or emergency solutions. 

We also work in the political space, which often sees clients paying more for our services than traditional organizations.

We provide a number of services and technology to clients, however to scale our efforts we are currently looking for round A investors to help scale our sales and marketing departments.

Because we already have long-standing relationships with clients, we have been able to build our solutions without major investments. However, if we are going to truly have an impact at scale we will need investors that have access to capital and new clients.