Siri The Brand

If problems are indeed opportunities, then shouldn't Africa be a 'land of opportunities'? 

Instead, even with improved access to education, data shows 60% of youth on the continent are unemployed or underemployed, suggesting that not enough Africans are able to turn these problems into opportunities. In fact, a documentary done by NTV Kenya dubbed 'Degree of Doubt' highlighted the plight of graduates with degrees in fields such as engineering, aviation and accounting who resort to menial labour like hawking in the slums or masonry (NTV,2020).

Indeed, having a problem does not guarantee that you will turn it into an opportunity. 

You need to know how to do so.

The incongruence between improved access to education, satisfactory test scores and inadequate problem solving ability, needs urgent redress. 

Is it possible that the pedagogy in use does not support problem solving?

With 15-20 million youth joining the African job market each year for the next decade (WEF,2019) and an estimated population of 1 billion by 2050, this great pool of youthful talent could be the silver bullet for Africa - but only if they are able to access to future ready skills education which empowers them to create opportunities.

In addition, future ready skills education particularly for Africa, must include lessons on mental wellness and resilience yet these are seldom focused on within the African classroom. 

Enter Siri the Brand - an education company leveraging on technology to prepare a generation of skilled, mentally healthy, resilient & future ready problem solvers for Afrika. 

Through our project Soma Siri Afrika, we are focused on the development , standardization and provision of co-curricular education that Spurs afro innovation to solve African problems. 

To this end , we train children how to solve problems using their skills and talents.

Our curriculum & method is the world's first Afrocentric, talent based skills education curriculum for children.

Our goal? 

100 million skilled young Africans actively using their skills, talent and design thinking for innovation (DT4I), to turn Africa's continental problems into scalable opportunities.

We have two offerings for parents and their children to choose from :- 

1. Siri Clubs : These are interest based clubs which offer a standardised, contextualised short courses for children to learn skills they are interested in. The Siri Clubs curriculum is integrated with competency based curricula which all African countries agreed to shift towards in order to address skills gaps. 

2. Siri Talent Academies: These are talent based long term academies where children get skilled based on their multiple intelligences (Gardner,1983) which a child is admitted into after engaging in Uwazi - an immersive 12 week multiple intelligences assessment environment. 

In both of these offerings, learners become "Super heroes for Afrika" and go through inductive learning as they design and pitch solutions to age appropriate "Siri challenges". In the talent academies, they go through an additional step; Solving under apprenticeship in a real business. This allows them to explore numerous careers early and benefit from learning by imitation.

Both of these are offered through a combination of in- person physical classes and self directed learning on the Soma Siri Afrika app which is accessible via mobile devices as well as on the web. 

Certified Siri Educators are also trained on the app after which they follow lesson guides and AI led journaling to run their classes.The role of the Siri Educator as they also  communicate with students and parents, conduct lessons, administer assessments, compile students portfolio and submit reports that enable us to collect data and insights to iterate our solution. 

Because of the Siri approach, we have been able to reduce the cost of Club fees from the standard industry rate of $15 per hour to $3 per hour. This means that we have been able to increase access and can scale fast 

Since June of 2021 when we started piloting Siri Clubs for Schools, we are now serving 3000 primary school children (ages 4-13) across 15 schools in Nairobi and its environs. 

We are targeting children because we seek to fill the gap between theoretical instructional classroom learning with the Siri approach - practical, inductive learning which enables them to solve problems in the real world now and in future. These children are highly motivated to "be a super hero for Afrika". They are taking charge of their own future. 

Thus through Soma Siri Afrika, children are able to learn early career exploration and learn practical skills through apprenticeship. This ties in well with competency based curricula which East African nations agreed to shift towards to address skills gaps. In addition, it ensures that primary school children are able to tie in their academics with real life, a component that's been missing for middle and low income communities in Africa.

The Siri Curriculum and Methodology are innately learner-led. This means that while we give learners age appropriate problems to solve at the beginning of each course, the learners decide what solution they want to design and thus what modules they want/need to learn to be able to solve the problem. This means that we are able to use their insights to iterate 

In addition, our approaches have been shaped by our work within schools since 2015. We collect feedback from parents, children and schools, analyse the data and use it to continuously improve our offerings to ensure that the education we offer is indeed allowing them to learn how to solve problems, how to innovate.

Through surveys given to the learners, journaling data filled in by learners as well as feedback in the parent-teacher diaries, we collect data to inform us of their goals, aspirations, and priorities as well as the outcomes that they experience and value. 

This is in fact what has led us to pivot to the project Soma Siri Afrika. We collected data that showed that parents felt the need to engage their children in talent development activities - so much so that they chose schools based on co-curricular offerings, but were not sure how to measure value, and how to ensure that these skills were transferable in the future. 

Our app has also been designed as a response to this. Through soma siri afrika, stakeholders are able to understand the objectives each term, expected outcomes . In addition they are able to communicate with each other effectively to motivate the learner and build a portfolio as evidence of the child's learnings. This was built from data collected from our centers and in schools as parents seek to be more informed about their children's talent education.

We have also taken in suggestions and feedback from our Siri Educators who deliver the curriculum

This extensive, ongoing consultation assures that our product is responsive to the identified need: training learners to problem solve.

We believe that if we use an inductive project and problem based approach to talent and skills education while training design thinking for innovation from an African perspective using domains that each child is interested in and likely to succeed at- because of their multiple intelligences (Gardner,1983), children will be highly motivated to collaborate in designing age appropriate solutions to problems around them, be empathetic about their community, country and continent and acquire- as a 'habit of mind' (Costa and Kallik,2008)- problem solving skills even at a young age. 

Parents and other stakeholders will support their children in implementation of these solutions and allow their children to engage in long term future-skills education because they can see the growth in their children and understand the expected outcomes at each level due to clear communication.

African business persons will also be willing to support children who are showing initiative by allowing them to solve simple problems under apprenticeship then there will be more life long learners, skilled opportunity creators, authentic Afro innovations, more self reliant and economically empowered youths and thus a generation of future ready problem solvers for Africa.

At Siri, we are iterating based on data collected through a number of ways

1. In determining instructional methodology

We collect evidence of learning through assessments given to the learners at the end of each term as well as solutions designed by the Siri solvers and stored in their portfolio. Results allow us to see which activities work, what should continue to be learned inductively and what should be taught instructively.

2. In finding a balance between the use of technology & in person learning

Results also  enable us to decide which aspects of our program should be virtualised and which ones require physical 

3. In determining modules for each course

Through surveys, solutions they have designed as well as journal entries, we have collected data that we intend to use with machine learning and AI in order to determine personalised modules for each individual learners course based on their MI

4. In understanding the successes of the project

• Children seem to be learning more attentively and deeply as they actively participate in their classes 
• In addition, data on the number of learners continuing within siri clubs for a year now , despite tough economic times and a strained schedule
• The growth of our project's clientele from 5 schools in 2021 July to 15 schools all purely from referrals also seems to point towards client satisfaction 

However, while we can see these changes among learners, parents and schools, we cannot confirm that we have indeed caused these.

In addition, we are not sure to what extent the individual Siri Educators are contributing to this change. 

With this in mind, we believe we are in level 2 of the spectrum.

We are currently measuring students skill acquisition through 

1. assessments 

2. Solutions they design 

3. Projects they showcase as solutions 

We also measure interest and motivation based on

1. Time spent completing assignments on and off the app 

2. Class attendance since it's voluntary 

3. Time to arrive in class - early, in time or late

4. Burn/churn rate : number of learners continuing with the program for at least 3 school terms

We measure stakeholders satisfaction from

1. Referrals to other clients

2. Extension of contracts 

3. Client surveys

Soma Siri Afrika is Preparing a generation of  skilled and future ready problem solvers for Africa by providing the world's 1st pan-African curriculum and methodology for co-curricular education.

The year was 2016 when a client who had been refferred walked into my music school with her daughter. Her daughter wanted to participate in a talent competition at a high level while she had never had any lessons in the instrument before. Fast forward to the end of the competition and both the client and her daughter were dumbfounded at the girl's success. Yet that was not what brought them back. In her words "there is just something amazing about the way she has changed". In just 5 months, there was a noticeable change in the young girls confidence and her self efficacy. She suddenly deeply loved to learn and was highly motivated to succeed. "That is Siri", I replied.

 Siri means secret in Kiswahili.  This Siri, I opine, needs to be better understood through proper research. 

You see, in addressing learning gaps as aforementioned, the role of the Siri Educator in ensuring that Soma Siri Afrika is successful in the development and implementation of the Siri curriculum and methodology, cannot be overstated. 

As the implementors of the project, success in choosing, training and keeping the SIRI Educator is key to ensuring success as envisioned in our  theory of change. Indeed, insights from their reports also guide the development of the curriculum as well as the technology. 

While they are currently picked based on their professional prowess in a certain skill area or skillet, Their role is much more than just that of a teacher or facilitator. They are expected to motivate learners, coach them through the design thinking process, inspire them to love their continent

All this, while they themselves have seldom undergone this kind of in-depth curriculum. 

Research into traits needed to be an effective and excellent teacher proves that there are indeed certain personality traits in addition to skills that regular teachers need to have in order to be highly effective (Erick, 2015)- traits that led to better learning outcomes for children. 

As such, we would like to research into the following question: 

How to nurture the natural: what makes an excellent Siri Educator. 

We would like to look into what natural traits a Siri Educator should have, what we can nurture in them by way of training and professional development and how we can continuously motivate them to ensure they stay in the team for greater continuity. 

As a result of the research, potential deliverables would be 

1. A multi cultural, research-based pre selection aptitude assessment, perhaps based upon the Multiple Intelligences.

 2. A research led training program manual to ensure deep learning of the Siri Educators. This manual ought to be deliverable on the app as well as in a hybrid format.

3. An in-service monitoring and evaluation toolkit that specifies key performance indicators and motivation methods to ensure low churn rate and continuity.

These would then be integrated into our technology and allow us to scale fast and efficiently into more schools for our B2B model and have confidence to roll out our B2C model in other countries on the continent. 

In the story I began with, the lady turned out to be a school proprietor and requested that we deliver the same kind of training at her school, thus enabling us to grow from just a B2C model into a B2B model as well. This goes to show how much influence the Siri Educator has upon our business model as well.

While lesson guides provide for standardized education, a learner led program such as ours requires the Educator to have a unique skill set as well as enjoy working with the guides. Should the guides thus be conversational, playful or strict? How much tool for creativity can we leave to the Siri Educators while still ensuring standardized delivery? Research into what makes a Siri Educator - understanding what makes them tick, would also inform our development of the lesson guides based on a clear understanding of the people who will be delivering/using them. 

By 2027 we intend to have reached 10000 primary school learners with the Siri Clubs (B2B2C) and have 5000 more enrolled in our Talent Academies (B2C). We intend to have rolled out our clubs for schools in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and DRC Congo and the talent academies in Kenya. 

The ability to choose excellent Siri Educators is thus key in ensuring that we can scale, that we can trust our data and that children are indeed able to solve problems as a habit of mind. 

Indeed, being granted the opportunity to work with a leap fellow would enable us to fill a major learning gap in the education of primary school children for whom future ready problem solving skills education has been inaccessible by ensuring we are able to provide these underserved children with excellent future skills education delivered by the best educators in the best ways possible.