Start A Library Trust

Start a Library Trust (SAL) is a non-profit organization in Kenya with its
programmes anchored on SDG4 to improve literacy and life skills for learners
aged 4-14. Our vision is that, one day, every learner will have the literacy and life skills required to transform Africa. We achieve this through the below strategic pillars;

1. Establishing vibrant Model School Libraries(MSL).
2. Capacity building school communities with cutting edge
pedagogical skills.
3. Advocating for the development and implementation of strong
policies and measures in literacy and life skill. 

Why school libraries? Because they are primary providers of early literacy and
life skills. Literacy is a critical contributor to economic and social development. It removes barriers to education, employment and financial independence. 

We are guided by our core values to deliver the work; these are

Accountability - We are prudent in using donor funding to deliver our mandate

Visionary  - we envision that through our interventions, one day, every learner will have the literacy and life skills to transform Africa.  

Inclusivity - we are keen on involving everyone irrespective of age, race, gender, ability etc

Passion - The organization is driven by a team that is passionate about education and children. 

The team lead is the Executive Director, who oversees the organization's day-to-day activities. She is in charge; 

1. Collaborate with the Board of Trustees to identify, create and implement strategic plans to actualize the organizational mission and vision
2. Identify, recruit, train and develop a talented team of employees who can lead critical departments and manage strategic organizational functions.
3. Monitor the Trust operations and ensure employees and business practices comply with regulatory and legal requirements
4. Develop the organizational culture and promote transparency and collaboration.
5. Develop partnerships with donors, industry stakeholders, shareholders, regulators, and relevant parties.
6. Identify potential risks and opportunities within the organization and its environment to protect the trust interests.
7. Identify potential sources of investment and fundraising opportunities
8. Represent the company at social and corporate events in ways that strengthen the brand and communicate the company’s vision.

The team lead has been involved in the solution development since inception. As a result, she better understands the problem, the solution, and the progress made on the solution development and has engaged with many stakeholders to envision the expected outcomes. 

The team comprises an EdTech expert, software developers, Literacy Content Developer, an IT specialist, a fundraising and partnership manager, a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, and an Administrative Assistance. In addition, two of the Board of Trustees are involved in the day-to-day development of app development, one supervising content and the other solution interface. 

The EdTech Expert is the overall Project Manager who oversees the Solution's development, including but not limited to project planning, task coordination, progress monitoring, liaising with the internal team on piloting risk management, and quality assurance. She works closely with the software developers, IT specialist and the Trustee in charge of Solution interference to ensure the solution meets the required criteria. 

The Fundraising Manager is in charge of identifying grants and partnership opportunities from local and international funders, donors and partners to invest in the app for piloting, hardware acquisition and/or further development. 

The Monitoring and Evaluation personnel works closely has worked closely with school communities to collect digital literacy gaps that have informed the development of the Solution. During the pilot and implementation process, he will also collect data and reports and analyse them to reflect the Theory of Change. 

The Administrative Assistant ensures the Solution is on course as per set timelines. She is also in charge of cashflows. 

Lastly, The Literacy Content Developer and the Trustee in charge of Content work hand in hand to develop interactive and relatable content that goes to the Solution.

The team is diverse enough to offer technical and management expertise to ensure the solution's development, piloting, launch and implementation.

The SALApp is a multi-device digital library that offers individualized learning and gamified assessments that generate reports to show TOC. 

In the wake of Covid -19 in 2020, children could not attend physical classes. The teachers were also not adequately prepared to deliver the syllabus online as it required digital and literacy skills. While learners in private schools continued learning online, since they had all resources, their counterparts in public primary schools experienced lost learning. This was mainly caused by a lack of access to reading and learning materials for learners in public primary schools due to marginalization. The SALApp has a variety of reading materials, guided literacy and remedial programmes within the five literacy bands; emergent, beginner, transitional, intermediate and independent. The content is accessible on multiple devices;  web, android, and IOS devices and allows both online and offline functionality. The app, therefore, provides learners with an accessible and convenient way to learn, irrespective of their physical location or socio-economic background. It bridges the educational gap and ensures these children have equal opportunities to acquire essential literacy skills in and out of school.

Secondly, with the introduction of the Competence-Based Curriculum in Kenya, digital literacy is highly emphasized as a core competency that learners need to acquire. While the Government of Kenya has done well in supplying mini laptops in public primary schools, teachers and learners have no basic digital skills. Most of them collect clouds of dust in the office of the administrators. The SALApp is loaded with interactive manuals for learners, teachers and parents to equip them with basic digital skills. 

Lastly, In our quest to set up physical libraries in public primary schools in the country, we have received a lot of feedback from education stakeholders on determining if learners are reading to learn. This question propelled our quest to develop the SALApp; as an interactive literacy app to equip learners aged 4-14 with foundational literacy skills. The app offers individualized learning, has gamified assessments and generates reports for different stakeholders; teachers, parents, and policymakers demonstrating the theory of change. The reports are detailed, with recommendations on assisting any learner being left behind.

Learners using the SALApp must sign up on their devices at home or school. Once signed up, they will automatically be directed to a gamified assessment to determine the literacy band they belong to. Afterwards, the band will open up for the learner to access reading materials. 

Throughout their reading, the parent and the educator will be able to draw a report on the educator/parent tab on how many words the learner can read in a minute and if they finished reading the book, etc. After reading a complete title, learners will be enlisted to a fun assessment to gauge their comprehension, vocabulary learnt, lessons learnt, phonic and phonemic awareness and creative writing skills. 

Once the learner completes reading all titles in the band, they will be subjected to another assessment to determine if to progress to the next band. If the learner doesn't meet expectations, more books will unlock within the current band for more reading and exercises. 

This process ensures that each learner learns at their own pace without pressure. In addition, the assessments are interactive and fun, so the learner doesn't notice they are 'exams'. On the other side, the parent/educator from the reports can determine which literacy skills their children are struggling with and can share feedback through the app.  

Foundational Research:

In our quest to set up 283 physical book libraries in public primary schools within 22 counties of Kenya. We have interacted with many teachers, parents, policymakers and government staff. There has been a dire need to introduce digital education in schools as the new curriculum emphasizes Digital Literacy as a key competency that learners must acquire.

In addition to this, during Covid-19 unexpected school break that lasted for 8 months, there was a general observation that children who attended urban and high-end schools continued learning through digital platforms. However, those in the marginalised communities stayed at home to perform house chores. By the time schools were opening, they had forgotten everything they had been taught. 

On this realization, we conducted two stakeholder engagement workshops with teachers, education experts and civil society organizations working in marginalised public primary schools nationwide. We sought their input on the content to be developed, the app features, and the education challenges to be addressed by the app. After setting every stage of the app, we call for a stakeholder meeting to share updates and seek feedback and partnership. 

As we plan to pilot the solution by the end of the year, we will seek their collaboration in piloting it in their partner schools.      

The advent of Covid 19, amplified the place of digital learning as a requisite for the continuation of learning among learners. The reality was that only those with the ability and capacity to utilise technology for learning purposes continued with learning. The need for a monitoring system to track the literacy levels of each learner has become an essential investment for stakeholders in the education space hence the birthing of the SALApp. The App is intended to benefit schools and learners in marginalised communities: where access to virtual learning, internet and electricity solutions are limited. It further goes ahead to respond to the current learning gaps such as; Limited or no Independent learning and digital literacy, the need to track individual learning and limited motivation to read amongst learners. The Solution, therefore, is in the development phase and will be availed on the web, Android and Apple platforms for piloting. 

From these findings the development team has incorporated, -books and audiobooks, educational literacy and numeracy programmes and teacher guides, interactive, experiential activities and word-based competitions for every storybook/non-fiction book so that the learning is more fun. Critically, the solution will track what children read and collect and analyse data to determine the impact.

The Solution has the following features; 
1. Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) baseline evaluation
2. Over 100 Interactive literacy activities covering all the 5 literacy pillars (Phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension)
3. 3-levelled and interactive literacy assessment games.
4. Individualized report generation to parents/guardians/teachers
5. 1000 levelled sight words
6. 100 e-storybooks aligned to the grade.
7. over 100 audiobooks for children abled differently
8. 100 downloadable worksheets
9. Immersive literacy teacher training manual

We strongly believe there is a need to strengthen the evidence in our solution. Since we would like to pilot the solution this year.  We intend to ensure we have minimal feedback to incorporate for scale-up.  Engaging in the LEAP Project will ensure that the final solution address all gaps that different stakeholders have shared through the stakeholder engagement meetings. In addition, it addresses most of the literacy gaps that children in marginalised communities face. We envision a solution that children can use with minimal supervision while allowing the educators/parents to get instant reports that show the theory of change and offers recommendations on additional support that the learner requires. 

As much as the solution is geared towards literacy, it will also bridge the digital skills gaps where learners and teachers can learn basic digital skills, such as operating a computer, navigating through windows etc. 

To this end, there is a need to strengthen the evidence base of the Solution to reflect the theory for change. This will enable us to create more content for wider geography, Africa, and beyond. It will also enable play a crucial role in our resource mobilization efforts. We need financial resources to submit the app to the relevant government quality assurance agencies for vetting and endorsement and gadgets to install the app for distribution in all schools. 

LEAP fellows will play an essential role in guiding us in aligning the collected data to inform policy development and implementation and scaling up the content to a broader education context while maintaining quality. 

1. How many learners are benefitting from the solution per geographical location at any given point, and why?

2. Is the content for a specific level being accessed by the audience it's designed for, or not and why?

Foundational research (literature reviews, desktop research)

1. Compiled report of available literacy apps with their pros and cons
2. Baseline reports of literacy and digital interventions in education
3. Geographical statistics of learners in schools and their literacy levels
4. Educators' statistics, role, highest education/professional level attained, and their challenge in supporting learners
5. Assessment of the different regions, their literacy levels and underlying issues affecting the delivery of literacy
6. What are the most consumed digital products by educators/ learners and parents, and why?

Formative research (e.g. usability studies; feasibility studies; case studies; user interviews; implementation studies; pre-post or multi-measure research; correlational studies)

1. How many parents, educators and learners have access to digital devices 
2. Solution's user-friendliness; Do users have difficulties navigating different tabs, are instructions in every account clear? Is the content relatable? Are reports useful to end users? 
3. Do schools have digital devices?  Or can a learner access it at home? Are different stakeholders willing and able to support the implementation of the solution? These include donors, education partners, government agencies, schools, parents, and potential barriers to its adoption.
4. The impact of the Solution on users' knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to digital literacy. Type of pre-and post-tests, surveys, and assessments aligned with specific digital literacy competencies?

Using the baseline assessments on available literacy apps, we are developing a holistic solution that addresses most of the gaps, such as; interactivity, a tab with progress reports, offline and online functionality, multi-device usage, IOS, android and web. In addition, the Solution offers individualized learning, with a key focus on reading to learn. 

From the findings, we also realised that most marginalised teachers and parents are not tech-savvy. We also found out that most schools benefitted from government tablets. However, most teachers do not know how to operate them, so we have included lots of digital skills manuals in the solution to enable them to learn and transfer the knowledge to the learners. For those who do not have, through our resource mobilization efforts, we will draw proposals for funding to purchase hardware for them. 

 The findings also revealed that children in rural settings are more marginalised compared to their peers in urban centres and, therefore, will need more digital literacy interventions, thus our solution.  

Most of the available solutions are not user-friendly, so our solution is being developed with this in mind to ensure different users can easily navigate through tabs and that the content is localized, age-appropriate and relatable.  

For the Solution to be adopted in a wide range, we will partner with education partners, government agencies, schools, parents and private institutions. 

We will employ a robust MEAL framework to collect data that informs the Theory of Change among users. 

Short term

1. The Solution development is completed within the set timeline
2. We receive quality content from different vendors 
3. The solution is user friendly 
4. Get strategic feedback and support from the LEAP Team to develop the solution. That is, guide us in aligning the collected data to inform policy development and implementation and scaling up the content to a wider education context while maintaining quality. 
5. The solution is piloted
6. Buy-in from different stakeholders to pilot the solution
7. Goodwill from Government agencies to pilot the solution 
8. Financial support from the LEAP team to inject into the solution development and piloting. 

Long term

1. Ensure that our solution is strong enough for implementation to a wide range of users and geography. 
2. Get funding for the implementation of the solution 
3. Engagement of relevant government agencies to assess, quality check, and approve the solution
4. Adoption of the solution by schools and/or approval by the government as a compulsory solution in all schools.
5. Bridge the regional educational gaps between children in marginalised communities and their peers in the urban centres
6. Acquisition of literacy and digital skills among teachers, learners, parents and school communities. 
7. Generating impact report that reflects users' Theory of Change. 
8. Documentation and sharing of impact reports to various stakeholders to; invest or duplicate in their communities.