Street2School.

A blended online and offline community learning platform that empowers young people across North Eastern Nigeria through access to basic foundational and soft skills.

There are currently 64 million young people aged between 10 and 24 in Nigeria; 63% of these youths are in the North majority being female. In Nigeria, UNICEF reports that about 10.5 million children and young people are not in school despite primary education being free and compulsory. Over 29% of children in NE Nigeria instead receive Qur’anic education which does not include basic literacy and numeracy. The growing insurgency since 2009 in addition to the economic barriers and sociocultural norms and practices has largely discouraged enrolment in formal education especially girls thereby leaving them disengaged and unproductive members in their communities. Through Streets2School, we are bridging this gap by providing alternative and accelerated pathways to access basic literacy and numeracy skills for these young people, especially girls. 

Street2School is an initiative that provides vulnerable young people who are out-of-school (13-24 years) from marginalized communities across North East Nigeria access to basic literacy and numeracy, soft skills, and life skills through our blended online and offline community learning hub. 

Where there is connectivity, our online platform connects youth volunteer educators (mainly students from tertiary institutions) to our target group (young people aged 13-24 years) from marginalized communities who provide 3 hours of learning and mentorship weekly. The online platform requires the user to have access to digital connectivity to access learning content through internet-enabled phones on WhatsApp & Facebook, which are common collaborative tools for young people. 

For areas with no connectivity, we are leveraging the power of radio and community-based media sharing points to drive our learning content to learners who may not have access to WhatsApp or data bundles. Our offline platform makes use of local community spaces where young boys and girls who are members of a community meet at different time intervals based on their gender to access our learning content and, in their own language.

Our solution targets, out-of-school vulnerable young boys and girls between the ages of 13-24 years in low-income and marginalized communities in northeastern Nigeria who are seeking an alternative and accelerated pathway to access foundational skills and soft skills. These cohorts of young people are the most underserved because according to the education law in Nigeria when you are 13 years old, it is believed that you have completed basic/primary education and have acquired the foundational skills required for you to proceed to secondary education. However, these cohorts of young people (13-24 years) have missed primary education and the foundational skills it offers and have passed primary school-going age. Hence they are stuck in between, cannot proceed to secondary school, and cannot enroll in primary education because of their age.

Our blended offline and online community learning solution provides them with an alternative and a second chance to access accelerated learning at self-paced, with or without internet connectivity. Our solution does not only provide our target user, with foundational literacy and numeracy skills but also soft and life skills to better their economic conditions. Using community organizing and participation in both offline and online components motivates and eases our users because they are learning through community support and with their peers who face similar challenges.

Users of our solution stand a chance of achieving foundation skills backed with a government-accredited Basic Education Certificate (BECE) in 3 months or 36 hours of learning and at least a soft and life skill i.e. the ability to produce an income-generating item. The combination of these skills builds the socio-economic conditions and resilience of our target users and better position them for further education, entrepreneurship, and employment.

We are people from the northeast where opportunities are very few. We are fortunate to have met and created a highly diverse, gender-balanced team that brings unique skills and experiences to the table. We all come from this community and we have witnessed some of the challenges children and young people continue to face in accessing basic learning opportunities. We understand the magnitude of the problem and the resulting consequences of not finding a lasting solution and while we cannot just wait on the government to do it all, we believe our solution would best address some of these challenges to an extent and ensure that these young people become more engaged and productive citizens in their communities. Through this project, we want to be the change factor that our community needs through youth power!  

The design thinking process allowed us to identify 3 key needs to be fulfilled to get our target population to learn. First was the need to learn at user convenient time as most of our target population are vulnerable people from resource-limited backgrounds who have to seek for livelihood to support their families at the times when their peers are learning in a typical Nigerian conventional school (8 am-2 pm), secondly was the need to learn at user pace, this was for the fact that most of our target population have outgrown their appropriate education level and cannot easily learn with their peers, and finally, the need to learn at user preferred local language. We were able to cater to these key needs by leveraging widely used digital communication platforms like Whatsapp, and Facebook as well as conventional media tools like radio sharing learning content using voice notes, pictures, and small byte videos while complimenting areas without digital connectivity with in-person learning, both component (online and offline) were provided in local community spaces, at user convenient time, pace and local language (Hausa and Kanuri). 

The process also enabled us to understand the need for a culturally friendly solution which is greatly enforced by the community leaders and parents who have a great influence on our target audience. E.g Peer-to-peer learning, gender-segregated, and distance learning where girls can learn without a lot of interaction with boys.

The fact that we are using low-tech, low-cost, and high-impact methods to provide learning opportunities in a challenging environment like ours makes our solution stand out.

Leveraging free platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook that young people including our target audience are connected to share learning content and connect learners with mentors online, leveraging community establishments like community media sharing points to share learning content with our target users who might be offline and finally an in-person community learning made possible through community organizing and participation of youth volunteers and community leaders for target users who might not have any device to access digital learning contents.

Beyond innovation, our solution speaks to the realities of our community and communities of similar contexts. The combination of these low-cost and accessible technologies has made second-chance learning possible for our target audience at self-pace while also allowing us to generate an income (Certification and the sale of income-generating items produced).

Already we are seeing the impact that our model is bringing to the social impact market, especially in the education sector. An example is the recently launched At-Risk Children project (Arc-p) that the Federal government of Nigeria uses our model of community organizing to connect out-of-school children (7-13 years) with youth volunteers (fresh graduates) to provide 2 hours of learning weekly. We foresee that organizations especially CSOs and NGOs working in regions with similar challenges, to provide learning opportunities for out-of-school young people and even in-school young people may replicate our model.

• A major barrier to further education for out-of-school young people in our community is the lack of the necessary foundational skills to progress in education and social skill to become actively engaged in the development of the community.

Hence, our first impact goal is:

To reach and connect 500 out-of-school young people in 10 marginalized communities across Northeastern Nigeria with foundational literacy and numeracy skills and citizenship education to help them progress faster and become socially active and socially conscious citizens 

• Another major challenge out-of-school young people in our community experience are a lack of employability skills which leads to unemployment, poverty, and the risk of engaging in criminal activities.

Therefore our second impact goal is:

To reach and connect 300 out-of-school young boys and girls aged (15-24years) in 6 communities with basic financial skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and at least an income-generating skill to accelerate them towards become productive citizens.

Through community organising, learning content creations and dissemination via the channels established through street2school and leveraging on community and out partners structures we have high hopes that we will achieve our goals.

Technology plays an important role in our solution especially the use of free digital platforms like WhatsApp, and Facebook which is widely used by young people across Nigeria including those from marginalized communities in the North East. It is, for this reason, we are leveraging the power of WhatsApp – a very reliable, fast, and simple messaging technology (that uses XMPP Extensible Messaging Presence Protocol for streaming XML elements over a network to exchange messages and presence information in close to real-time) to reach as many young people through our online community hub where young people aged 10-20 years especially girls can access. Also, since most households have radio access, we are leveraging this tool through a partnership with a few local radio stations so that many of our target audience can easily access our learning content in their languages. In a quest to eliminate barriers such as internet connectivity and the cost of radio airtime, we are leveraging podcast (Anchor) to create audio learning contents that are stored in MicroSD cards and distributed through our online community learning hub, which can be listened to offline on devices like solar-powered Radios.

Our solution is currently active in 3 communities with a total reach of 545 direct users (60% girls) and over 1000 indirect beneficiaries.

While we keep improving our solution through feedback and we plan to reach 2,000 direct users by 2024.

Technical: Since our online component relies on internet connectivity (data and network) to share learning content online, this may not be readily available to our target population, mostly in communities with poor internet connectivity.  This might impact the number of young people we are able to reach. However, with the appropriate funding, we are considering setting up network hubs in the communities where young people can connect to the internet at a discount.

• Aisha DD’s skills acquisition Centre: A Women-Led organization with expertise in supporting girls’ access to life skills. They support us by co-curating life skills and learning content.
• Borno state Agency for Mass literacy: They support us by providing a government-recognized Basic Education Certificate (BECE) to our users who complete a minimum of 36 hours of learning and pass a required test.
• Co-Development Hub and innovation and incubation hub that supports our project through capacity building, and mentorship.
• Generation Unlimited is a UN Public, private, and Youth Partnership initiative that connects youth-led solutions to investment and capacity-building opportunities.
• U-Report is an innovation-based, user-centered social monitoring tool based on simple Short Message Service (SMS) messages (poll questions, results, and sharing of useful information) designed to strengthen community-led development, citizen engagement, and positive change. Through U-report, we are raising awareness about our solution and how volunteers and users can sign up and provide feedback through an interactive SMS for Free.
• Community media sharing points are businesses that operate mostly in low-income and marginalized communities across Northern Nigeria, where access to electricity and internet data bundle is a challenge. They provide the services of phone charging and media file sharing off-internet by sharing files with customers (mostly young people) using technologies like USB connection, Bluetooth, and or Xender. 

Key Resources:

• Learning contents
• Partners

Key activities:

• Recording and delivering literacy, numeracy, and soft and life skills learning contents
• Community organizing and engagement.
• Issue Basic Education Certificate
• Source for the partnership sale products

Type of Intervention:

• Second chance learning

Segment:

• Out-of-school youths (between the ages of 13-24years) in low and marginalized communities
• Families of the out-of-school youths and the host community.

Value proposition:

• Free and certified accelerated learning of skills required for further education, entrepreneurship, and employment at the user’s pace and in local languages.

Partners and key stakeholders:

• Learning content creators ( Volunteer teachers and micro lesson designers)
• Community structures (Leaders)
• Community Media sharing Partners
• U-report

Channels:

• Facebook and Whatsapp
• Community media sharing points
• Community safe spaces
• U-report SMS

Customers

• Out-of-school young people who are seeking the required skills to progress at a faster pace.
• Youth and adolescent development Donor agencies and organizations
• Socially conscious individuals who are well-to-do.

Impact measures

• Out-of-school youths engaged
• Certificates issued
• Goods produced and sold

Customer Segment Value.

• Promote innovative approaches to access education for young people in marginalized communities.

Ours is an impact-driven social venture, our business model is to charge a fee between 1,500 Naira – 2,000 Naira ($3.6 -$4.8) for each interested user to access/obtain certificates, providing us the opportunity to keep our learning content FREE. In addition to a shared income model of retaining 40% of the income generated from the sale of items produced through our in-person life skills learning component.  Going forward, we plan to start charging a fee for learning content that would be tagged as premium content (Where learners can access advanced learning content on soft skills).  We pursue grant opportunities and partnerships to implement solutions in a project-based manner. In the long run, we will seek and raise capital investment to fund our life skill component and the income from the investment can be shared between the investor, the business, and the producer.