"Havasar" educational application

"Havasar" is a mobile application, which contains accessible educational materials for children with visual, hearing, and intellectual disabilities. 

Children with visual, hearing and intellectual disabilities are deprived of their right to excellent education, as there are few accessible educational materials for them. In Armenia at least 7159 pupils studying in 983 schools currently face this problem [1, official source of EMIS, Armenian only]. That means, that this problem concerns at least 70% of the public schools in Armenia. The problem has a much bigger scale worldwide: according to UNICEF there are 240 million children with disabilities and half of them are out of school, and that is partially a result of a lack of accessibility.

The children who are excluded from education or do not get the quality education they have right to, later are not able to find jobs, and continue to be excluded from society. These in their turn lead to deeper poverty and marginalization in society. The ties between education and poverty can be seen in official statistics. In Armenia 93.7% of the population considered "extremely poor" and 59% of the population considered "poor" hasn't received even elementary education. In Armenia, 25% of persons having disabilities also live under the line of poverty and the unemployment rate among people with disabilities who can work is 94%.

Another problem, that we see is the low rate of digitalization of education. We live in a world, where digital tools and digital skills play a bigger role than ever, but still many people do not have basic digital skills when leaving school. That also deepens the problem of unemployment and poverty, as it is much harder to find a job without sufficient or at least minimal digital knowledge. So for addressing these problems we have come up with a digital solution presented below.

As a solution to the problem, we have developed “Havasar” (Armenian word, means “Equal”) mobile educational application. The application contains accessible forms of public textbooks. Namely, there are video lessons with graphic solutions for children with intellectual disabilities, adapted audio lessons for children with visual problems, and video lessons with sign language translation for children with hearing disabilities. Also, the application is accessible itself. Its functioning is synchronized with “Accessibility settings of devices”, there are functions for changing background colors and font size in-app. There is also a function for creating a helping character, which helps the user to navigate through the app and makes his/her journey easier and more interesting. It’s important to mention, that app is designed universally, which means, that though it is intended for children with a specific type of problem, it can be used by everyone regardless of having a disability.

In the end, it is to be mentioned, that “Havasar” is not a solution to replace public schools, but rather to supplement them.

The main beneficiaries of “Havasar” are children with visual, hearing, and intellectual disabilities, as they get the opportunity to exercise their right to education. Besides their parents/other family members, their teachers and the schools they attend will also benefit. Parents would have more time for working, teachers’ work would become more efficient and a serious problem for schools and the educational system overall would be solved. Apart from the main beneficiaries, children who undertake long-term (more than 3 months) medical treatment, children who for a long or short period time are out of school for some reason (e. g. migration), children whose parents neither have enough time to help them with education nor enough resources for affording additional lessons for their children and children who have just some difficulties with learning also benefit from “Havasar”.

So, the solution is innovative, as we offer digital tool, which is both useful and entertaining for children. And besides, it solves an important educational problem. First and foremost, it makes the life of parents, whose child has a disability, easier and the work of teachers, who have a pupil with disabilities, more efficient, as they do not have to solve the problem of providing accessible educational materials to the children, who need them, themselves.

“Havasar” has a mission to ensure equal opportunities for all in education. For achieving this our team works jointly for 4 years. In these years we have implemented 9 middle- and short-termed projects, funded by both local and international donors. Some of those projects included cooperation with local self-governing bodies of Armenia. Besides we took part in different competitions and incubator programs (UNDP’s DemoCoDesignLab, “Kaits” incubator by “Teach for Armenia” foundation, “Buissup” global forum startup competition by “The Union of Armenian entrepreneurs). Because of all these, we have a deep understanding of the problems which we are trying to solve. Below you can find short information on team members' experiences and roles.

“Havasar’s” main staff is composed of 3 co-founders, a content manager, a product manager, and outsourced experts. Founders are 1. Amalya, executive director. She is the author of the easy-to-read manual “Me in community” and is working in the disability sphere for more than 5 years. Herself having a visual disability she understands the problem deeply. 2. Mher, development manager. He is a public administration expert and has 3 years of experience in fundraising and project coordination. He is also president of “Pathway to” NGO. 3. Alla, marketing expert. Besides being the youngest staff member, she has experience in project management and PR, she is a student of political science. The product manager is Asthghik. Having an education background in marketing communications, she is well experienced not only in sales but in product management also. Astghik has worked as a product manager at “Rostelecom Armenia” for more than 6 years. She is experienced in freelance work in the IT sphere, while she independently worked on several projects as a product manager or customer care specialist. 

The majority of team members have worked/work at "Pathway to" Inclusive Society Development NGO, which strives for inclusion and equal opportunities since 2018. The work included direct communication with beneficiaries (in this case with people having disabilities), conducting training for and with them, creating education modules, organizing public discussions, etc. And that expertise has greatly helped team members to become deeply aware of the problem.

As there was no research on how severe the problem is, in the summer of 2020 we conducted our own research among 30 teachers teaching in elementary schools in Armenia. 54.5% of them think, that public schoolbooks are not accessible for children with visual and hearing problems, and 52% think that they are not accessible for children with intellectual problems. 56.5% of them also think that digital educational materials can help make education accessible for children with mentioned problems.

“Havasar’s” prototype was launched in the App store and Play market in September 2021, containing adapted lessons of 2 textbooks of the first semester of first grade, namely “Alphabet” and “Mathematics 1”. Right after launching we have agreed with 1 one of the biggest public schools of Yerevan for testing the app. The testing was accompanied by the research having 3 parts. Within the 1st part, 72 parents of the children who used the app were provided with a questionary for 1 month. Results are as follows: the rate of usage is 40% (the rate is the average of the personal usage rate), 77.5% of parents find the app useful for their children, and 80% of the stated, that children have used the app without difficulties. Then we conducted experts’ polls with 3 teachers whose students were actively using the app. Teachers find the app useful and they think that it solves an important educational issue. All of them have stated, that the app is especially useful at home. They think also that the app can be used by not only those who have a disability but also by other pupils. And lastly, we have sampled children who used the app for finding out how attractive the app is to them. For 85% of them, the font sizes and background colors were described as “good”, and more than 90% stated, that they liked the lessons and the sound of it.

The innovation behind "Havasar" is seen when compared to traditional and existing solutions, which are presented below.

The traditional way of solving the problem was so-called “special schools”, which were schools specified for the education of children with some type of disability (e. g. “school for blinds”). Those schools did provide accessibility, but they excluded children from society and violated some basic rights of children. That’s why the Government of Armenia closed most of them down (and continues to close them). After the closing of the schools, children with disabilities started to go to public schools, and the burden of finding/creating accessible educational materials was laid fully on children’s parents and teachers, and in most of the cases, they are not able to do that properly.

“Havasar’s” work is unique, as there was no such initiative, which targeted public education. There are of course several other digital apps and other solutions similar to “Havasar” (e. g. “Aregak”, “ImDproc”, “Dasaran. am), but they either don’t target public education or are not accessible for children with disabilities.

Below impact goals for the next 2 years are represented:

• Making the educational system of Armenia more inclusive by 33%. The estimation is done based on our calculations of how many textbooks we will adopt: We plan to adopt the main textbooks of the first 4 grades of school, which is 33% of the total.
• Pupils of the elementary schools of Armenia are better educated by 2% at least. There are approximately 160.000 pupils in elementary schools, so the outcome will be reached if 8000 pupils actively use the app.
•  Promoting digitalization of education by 2%. The estimation is done by calculating how much time will the child spend on learning/using the app. According to our calculations, the time is half an hour a day on average.
• Having 200 subscribers by the end of the project starting to generate $4000 monthly at least. As described under question 10, we have 2 subscription patterns, and we estimate, that 75% of the subscribers will choose the cheaper option. 

Besides mentioned outcomes, “Havasar” will help to combat unemployment, reduce marginalization and poverty, and overcome some stereotypes in the long-term period. “Havasar” directly addresses 2 of the SDGs: 4th quality education and 10th Reduced inequality. “Havasar” promotes also ideas of child-centralized education and universal design. 

The basic technology used is the mobile application, which can be freely downloaded from App Store and Play market. Here are some technical characteristics: used data is MySQL, coding language is PHP, architecture is Laravel API with Jwt authorization token.

The methodology of creating accessible lessons is some kind of hybrid technology of old and new tools: Special educators work on scenarios of audio and video lessons based on the existing methodology, but they make adaptations necessary for digitalizing the lessons. Speaking more clearly, they make the lessons suitable for being uploaded in the app.

As mentioned the app has been launched in September 2021. As it was only a pilot, we represented it to only 1 school for testing it. So we were expecting no more than 100 users, but we actually had 400 users. Now the app is in the phase of being relaunched. It would be launched in mid-November with new features and content. The Dashboard of the app is synchronized with Google Analytics, so we can gather detailed information on users' quantity, their experience, and the time they spend in the app.

After relaunching we expect to reach 8000 users in the next 2 years at least. It is to be mentioned also, that "Havasar" has plans to scale in other countries as well. That will help us to become self-sustainable and reach millions of people in a long-term period.

Our team is predetermined to reach the set goals, no matter how hard that would be, but of course, there are some challenges on our pathway.

One of the challenges is the limited financial resources. This is a project demanding a lot of human resources and it's hard to maintain big staff without enough finances.

Another challenge is finding international partners. Scaling is a must for us, but it wouldn't be possible without reliable partners outside of Armenia. That's why we are in active search for them but still couldn't find one. We believe. that partaking in international forums, competitions or events will help us to overcome this challenge.

Lastly, we are interested in the automatization of production, particularly in the creation of lessons, including scenarios, animation, etc. We think, that this could be accomplished via AI, but as there is no team member with relevant background we are not sure. So automatization and AI are another challenge for us.

It's not only our past experience but also established cooperation, that makes us a good candidate for addressing the targeted problem. In these years we have cooperated and collaborated with different national and international stakeholders, such as UNICEF Armenia, Global Fund for Children, "Teach for Armenia" foundation, "Union of Armenian entrepreneurs", etc. But the most important cooperation is the one established with "Republican Psychological-pedagogical Center" (RPPC), which is a public body responsible for inclusive education and was established in 2017 by the Government of Armenia. We have signed a memorandum of collaboration with them and that would allow us to involve more human resources and expertise and spread the solution much more efficiently.

“Havasar’s” main content, that is the accessible lessons of school materials, are free of charge. But there are also additional games and exercises, for which customers will need to subscribe. So, the main business model for revenue generating are B2C sales. For the begging, we intend to have 2 subscription patterns with monthly rates of ~17$ and ~33$.  Understanding, that our product solves a problem in which public bodies are highly interested, we put much effort to sell the product to State. So as the reader probably understood, we have intentions to gain revenue through B2G sales. Nevertheless, B2C sales are our main way for revenue generation, as in this case we are independent of the decisions of public bodies and their policies. On the other hand, B2G sales, if successful will ensure higher revenue. 

In the long-term period, scaling to other countries is the main way to ensure sustainability. In a 2 years-period, that is the end of 2024, we plan to have educational content in one other language than Armenian. We haven’t still decided which language that would be, but we have 3 variants to choose from: Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Those were preselected, as the problem we are combating is also a severe issue in the countries, where they speak those languages.

Before that sustainability is to be maintained via grants and partnerships.