Learning Quest: Using Tech to Bring Accessible Learning

Learning Quest is an initiative focusing on distributing books donated by people, schools, and libraries from the USA to underprivileged children in India.

 When a child is deprived of essential resources, what they do afterward and their perception of the world is changed as an effect. With proper education comes the ability to think better, earn better and explore new horizons! But if a kid does not attend a school or lacks educational resources, their view of the world would be constrained, they pick low-income jobs early in their life and this cycle keeps going in a loop! Currently, 40% of children in poverty don't have the proper education they need. Even in some parts of the USA, there are communities where teachers and students don't have the money and recourses to provide a good education for children. Roughly 72 million children are affected by this issue and therefore are not prepared for the real world. This can lead to many things such as unemployment, poor health, under-representation, and even cases of exploration.   

Learning Quest is a journey to an underprivileged child’s success through community-based education services and resources that can be used by everyone alike. There will be many factors playing into Learning Quest to make it reach as many people as possible. For starters, there will be a Learning Quest mobile application. This mobile app will be able to help underprilbaged institutions connect with willing donors who are ready to donate them supplies and funds. Schools or any other institution of learning are eligible to register as a receiver so they may directly coordinate with the volunteer. This eliminates the use of crowdfunding as it is more direct. The app will be able to show hundreds of schools that are in need of specific things and this will be hosting both international schools and schools from the USA. The app will be built using Swift in Xcode and will store data in a MySQL database. Users and schools can have their separate log in where they can take their progress on recieving/donations. On top of the app, Learning Quest will host programs related to finance, computer science, and entrepreneurship to get indivusals kickstarted into new fields. 

My target population is all of the children who don't get the proper learning recourses they deserve. These children are in 3rd world countries and in places where education is not a top priority. Countries can include rural parts of India, Somalia, and Kenya. As of now, they lack proper institutions as well as recourses such as books, notebooks, and writing tools. The Learning Quest application and distribution method allow schools and donors to be easily connected with each other. This allows an individual to give aid to the school in whichever way helps. Our distribution method calls for giving books to needy children and raising money to help support their other essentials. We can use the funds that come with running the distribution side by building school libraries and creating better learning environments at the schools. 

I have been advocating for education rights and accessiblity since 3rd grade. I hosted local spelling bees and used the donations to give back to an organization specializing in education. Inspired by a 2017 family trip to India (when I was 9 years old) I conducted the first book donation drive for underprivileged kids. Since then I am striving towards helping kids around the world through what I think is a resource many needy kids lack: proper education and learning tools. The experience I got from my trip in the beginning led me to the conclusion that children don't get the exposure to education that they need. For example, kids in rural India will not have read books in English from the USA. Hence, Leanring Quest is able to do this through our app and distribution model. 

I have also been coding since elementary school and can work with the languages of Python and Java. I am also skilled in HTML / CSS, which is what was used to create the website for Learning Quest. I am currently delving into learning about Swift, which will help the creation of the "in development" Learning Quest mobile application. All of this will help in the creation of the Learning Quest technology side. 

One last thing I do well is marketing. My mission was to spread the word about Learning Quest to as many people as possible and impact as many lives too. As of now, we have accumulated many partners and have made the local news too. With Learning Quest, we will soon expand to a team of volunteers around the globe and sustain more partners in donations of books as well as scaling our mobile application. 

I currently run Leanring Quest as a non-profit organization. 

Learning Quest right now is an initiative focusing on distributing books and other learning supplies/education donated by people, schools, and libraries from the USA to underprivileged children in many parts of the world. We collect funds and books from donors all around the world to buy books for kids in places like India and Africa. We are currently in the ideation phase of building an app that can connect institutions with donors. As of now, we have donated more than 6500+ books to USA and India where we have impacted neurodiverse adults and children positively. So far, this number has been 1000+ children and neurodiverse adults. 

We have already impacted many children and know how we can further develop Learning Quest for the better. We have been able to gather fundamental information into better understanding how the application should be created and which areas will be impacted the most. 

There are many organizations that give books to needy children. However, these organizations only donate in the USA. We want to be able to donate USA literature to places outside of the USA. This is something they are not doing. We also want to create an app that can directly help with this mission. I decided not to join them because I first hand saw the struggles that children in foreign countries were facing in education. I wanted to be able to help them in many different ways by starting an organization that brings exposure to accessible education in many forms. 

The objectives of my project are to get as many books and other learning supplies to children as possible. We will first start off with simple books and tools for education but in the future branch out to teaching underprivileged kids about STEM and Finance as well as civic issues too by creating curriculums on our website. Our objective for next year is to get 20,000 books donated to as many as 10,000 children in many different countries and we will do this through getting grants and partnerships that can aid in getting books across international waters. At Learning Quest, we will build an app that can connect schools to donors too, where users can directly support institutions and this will be possible through creating a mobile app in Swift and scaling from there. And finally, we will look into international partners and volunteers to make our process of distributing education smoother which will come from good marketing. All of this will help Learning Quest become an international organization. 

The core technology that will help with Learning Quest is our mobile application and everything that revolves around it. For starters, the movie application will take in data from either a school or a donor and store it in a MySQL database for tracking purposes. The application will also use AI, to sort and classify groups of schools together using a clustering algorithm such as k-means. This will help a user try to find a certain school with selected qualities if they want to have a specific donation purpose. Finally, our application will be created using the programming language known as Swift, in the IDE Xcode. All changes will be made here and updates will roll out when working on this side. 

Learning Quest also uses a website that has been created using HTML / CSS. This is where right now users come to donate to us and where we find donors for books too. Our mobile application will simplify this process a lot, however. 

We currently serve over 1000 kids. By next year, through partnerships, grants, and volunteers, Learning Quest will be able to affect more than 10,000 children in at least 5+ different countries. 

Currently, I face barriers in scalability. I want more people to hear about Learning Quest so they can help make a positive change. This includes the STEM and Finance recourses. But most of all, over the next year Learning Quest, wants to scale in outreach, donating books and learning supplies through many different countries and securing partnerships with organizations in these places using the app. I want to make it so that the application is the primary way of getting resources to children. I find that it makes donations easier and is a convenience on both ends. If people don't hear about the app as well as our overall initiative, then it may limit our impact goal for next year. 

Children's Book Project ( USA ), Vowels of Peoples Association ( India ), Seva Sayogh ( India ), and Green Street Books ( USA ). I work with these organizations as they help me come in contact with places I can donate the books. Sometimes when I am overseas, etc., they help by distributing the books too. Some organizations give to specific communities in need while others give to hospitals. In the end, they all affect children who need education resources the most. 

The business model is simple. I want two groups of people using the Learning Quest app and website. One is a donor and the other is an institution in need. The app provides these users with the perfect tools to help them ensure proper success in fulfilling a child's dream. Learning Quest gives the users who donate a clean view of all the schools available for donation, where we also sort the schools based on their preferences. For schools, we make sure to match them with users who are ready to give a tool they need ( money, books, notebooks, etc. ) Both ends need these tools to make for a more seamless experience in making a positive impact. It simplifies the process of finding a place to donate and getting donations. A lot of the time, schools are forced to get donations from outside organizations and not individual donations. the Learning Quest business model does the opposite of that; building a connection between these two users.

One way of financial sustainability is through getting money from grants. These grants will help in ways of collecting books for donation and assisting the development of future programs. Our partners will also assist us in ways that don't require money at all as they are in charge of the finding and distribution of these books. Individual donors help in getting books overseas and also the buying of books too. When the app launches, essentially all money that comes after will be used in the development of new programs as the app will be free for use and will require no connection in the development team. It is a two-way connection only ( school and donor ) so no part from the Learning Quest team will come into play. Therefore, we reach financial sustainability as we can use the money that we get to expand our organization and programs.