Pass it Forward

The project believes that everyone has a skill and can pass it forward. Thus, we want to connect people who want to share their skills/talents and institutions that need volunteers, to create a network for education. Therefore, we want to solve problems that affect our century: the devaluation of education, the lack of support for NGOs and the integration of communities. On a global scale, we believe that such integration will be further enhanced by, for example, cultural exchange. 

Technology has acted, in the last decades, as an agent of human integration. However, little of its potential has been exploited to make communities integrated. What the project intends is to create a network of people for education. In this way, we believe that every person possesses a talent and can be passed on to others -wheter it is with a musical instrument, dance or art. In thss way, we want to make ordinary people teachers, so that human knowledge is exploited and more people can have access to it. All this will be built by virtual means, registering potential teachers and institutions open to the project. Like that, we can make a young guitar player be a teacher in a nursing home, for example.

We want to provide learning opportunities for those who do not have access to educational tools, whether by distance or poverty. For this, anyone can be a teacher: the project aims to reach all types of people, regardless of age, ethnicity, religion or nationality. We want to break down physical barriers to human integration.

The project will be based in the digital environment. We will catalog the institutions to know what kind of education they accept, the public they work with, the days available and the location. On the other hand, we will catalog potential teachers for their skills and where they live. We want to connect them by proximity and compactness.

There are several volunteer programs. What sets us apart is to make the average human being able to pass on what he knows to others, creating a kind of "school" of all modalities. In this way, the attainable scale is maximum, as everyone is able to contribute to the project and make the community better.

We plan to use algorithms on our site. Through it, we can reconcile the volunteers with the institutions, using their skills and localities.

The human being is the instrument to change the community in which he lives. Often, by their own will or by curriculum need, we find people willing to volunteer, but without finding the right institutions or actually passing on what they can. The project seeks to address the lack of community integration and the lack of educational opportunities for the poorest. We want to make education and knowledge our product, encouraging each one to help others.

In three months, we got 4 students as volunteers to reach about 30 children. The number of people affected by the project depends on the number of volunteers and the number of institutions - and how many people each helps. We have no idea how much this can take in a few years, because it depends on the radius of action.

We want to expand the project to the five Brazilian regions, through the contact network that we founders have. For next year, we want the project to reach the countries of Latin America, because of the proximity and by having some simultaneous NGOs.

The biggest barrier faced by the project is the lack of visibility. We need a way to reach people, what we want to do through social networks and advertisements. We are three teenagers, we do not have the money to found the site or to boost it in social networks.

We want to find people willing to help with this project because there is much to be improved. In addition, we need to find donors to found the site and use algorithms.

3 people.

We are three high school girls who had the opportunity to study at a school that encourages the social and altruistic side of the students. About 2 years ago, we volunteered at institutions in the city, especially AFETO. There, seeing the needs of the children, we decided to volunteer as teachers of what we were good at: Mathematics, English and Arts. We are extremely hardworking, but not only at high school: we fight for the desire to help the next. Together we have more strength to increase that idea.

We already cooperate with an institution for needy children in our city, called AFETO. Beyond it, we are making contact with three more institutions to increase the area of action of the project, in addition to other colleagues and friends who volunteered to teach their skills.

Nosso produto é a educação. O que queremos é compartilhar o conhecimento entre pessoas, de todos os tipos, por meio do voluntariado. Nós somos o meio de comunicação entre essas pessoas, adequando cada habilidade à cada instituição, tudo isso por redes sociais.

What we need to make this project real are donation funds to create a website: it is through it that we will have a database of volunteers and institutions available. In addition, through dissemination in social networks (such as instagram) we want to make the project visible to people, and can reach more and more. For the future, we want to make the project a mean to collect the instruments that can be used in class (books, notebooks, digital and musical instruments, etc.), by donating used or money.

We believe in our idea, that is why we are apllying to MIT Solve. The project is simple and real: if we can make it visible to people, we can create a volunteer program that adds to the whole community. It will be pleasurable to those who teach and to those who will gain knowledge that was not possible before. We believe that the instrument to change the world is the human being, and education can be its main weapon if used in a good way. We know that good projects will be sent to MIT, some revolutionaries in the scientific world, but what we need is somehow to boost our project.

We believe that we can cooperate with educational NGOs, such as the Khan Academy, and technology companies such as Coursera. We can, through it, improve the knowledge that will be passed on.

The prize will be used to found the site and the necessary algorithm. In addition, we will advertise in social networks about the project, and we will buy the necessary objects for the classes, of all the varieties, like musical instruments, sporting articles, books, notebooks, etc.