Padziwe

Padziwe envisions a world in which learners have access to quality learning resources that are easy to understand. Our mission is to develop systems and tools that help students learn quicker and more effectively.

We believe that education is the key that unlocks the potential of every child. It is the most important investment a developed society can make and the most effective way to nurture a developing one. 

Core Values
Accessible education: Padziwe believes that education should be accessible to all children, regardless of their background or socio-economic status.

• Innovation: Padziwe values innovation and creativity in the development of educational content and technology solutions.
• Empowerment: Padziwe aims to empower children and educators through digital literacy, providing them with the tools and resources to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
• Collaboration: Padziwe recognizes the importance of collaboration and partnerships to achieve its mission and goals.
• Quality: Padziwe is committed to providing high-quality educational content and ensuring the efficacy and impact of its work.
• Impact-driven: Padziwe values results and seeks to create meaningful and lasting impact in the communities it serves.

Pilirani Kumasewera is the Founder and CEO of Padziwe. He is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the organization. working closely with the education offer and teachers, he is responsible for conceptualizing and approving educational products and services which Padziwe offers. He also plays a crucial role in creating strategic relationships with other important stakeholders in education. He is also responsible for managing the team in collaboration with the HR & Operations officer to make sure everyone stays motivated to achieve the organization's common goals 

We believe in the power of data and learning if educational programs are to be successful. If the LEAP Project is as good as advertised, our organization stands to benefit a lot in adding to its knowledge on how best to do certain things. Therefore, this will be considered as a priority by our team lead and education officer, two of the people who will be attending to this, if our application is successful. 

Furthermore, since our team lead is in a decision-making position, there should be no problem in allocating sufficient time to the sessions under this project

Nthanda is an interactive and animated mobile application that seeks to help learners gain foundational literacy and numeracy.

The state of education in Malawi has reached a crisis-level. There are so many problems facing the education sector and these include: Exceedingly large classes, long distances to schools, and inadequate teaching and learning materials. This is resulting in:

• 4% dropout rate every year
• 22% yearly repetition rate (costing the government about MWK45.1 Billion)
• Over 50% of learners are not able to complete primary education and transition to secondary school. 

90 percent of 10-year-olds in Malawi cannot read a simple text or story and understand it.

Nthanda is an interactive and animated mobile application that seeks to help learners gain foundational literacy and numeracy.

The content in the app is presented using visually rich and interactive media such as videos, audio, animations, images, and texts. This is to make learning fun and help learners understand the concepts much easier. This variety of media also expands the number of ways through which learners and teachers can access the content, depending on the available hardware.

The content that is designed for learners in the app focuses on literacy and numeracy. There are four subjects as follows: Masamu (Mathematics), Chichewa (the primary language in Malawi), English, and Nthano (short stories for kids). All subjects, except English, are presented in Chichewa and designed for the Malawi curriculum context.

Civil Society Education Coalition (CSEC), the largest consortium of education organizations in Malawi, conducted a pilot study to test a limited version of the Nthanda App in 2022. This pilot project was conducted over a period of two academic terms and aimed to put the app into the hands of actual learners and teachers for realistic feedback which would then be incorporated into the final version.

During this period, Nthanda and its content reached 1, 743 children at the lower primary school level (standard 1 and 2). Here are the results which were observed over this period:

The value that both children and teachers intrinsically place on technology proved to be an incentive for increased school attendance and excitement across all the schools and churches. Comparatively, absenteeism and drop-out rates were reduced significantly.

The interactive and visually-rich content accompanied by continuous assessment made it easier for teachers to implement learner-centered and outcome-based pedagogical approaches. It was reported that this helped the children understand what they were learning more effectively and achieve higher marks on the relevant tests.

The hardware used allowed for better class management and small group work, supporting the development of social, leadership, and interaction skills in the learners. Teachers reported that reserved and slower learners were positively affected by the direct interaction with technology and were more willing to engage in learning activities.

However, this pilot exposed the huge financial costs that these kinds of projects would incur, especially if the tablet approach is adopted as the aim option. There is a need to find ways to reduce costs as much as possible to ensure sustainability over a long period of time.

Digital Education has become quite popular in recent years. There have been many interventions and research projects in different contexts. Some data on best practices and recommendations has been published from research projects. 

Organizations such as the EdTech Hub are championing the use of sandboxes where edu-tech interventions are rigorously tested so that the feedback can reveal gaps and inform subsequent improvements of the product/service.

As a relatively small organization, we do not have the HR capacity, especially in research, to design and conduct experiments that would help us gain this crucial data. This partly helps explain why the pilot we had in 2022 was conducted by another organization, not ourselves. 

We need to learn as much as we can about how children in a rural context in Malawi gain literacy and numeracy through an edu-tech intervention and the issues involved. This data would be invaluable in helping us tweak our product and design a scaling model

1) How does the choice of hardware affect learners' ability to gain foundation literacy and numeracy?

2) What is the most cost-effective way to implement an edu-tech intervention in a rural setting with successful results within a reasonable amount of time?

By the end of the 12-week LEAP Project sprint, we would like to have data on how best learners acquire literacy and numeracy through a digital intervention. Summative research would help us identify the actual factors that contribute to this outcome while at the same time helping us eliminate accidental factors outside of our intervention. 

These outputs will help us in:

• Making changes to the solution: both content and app(software)
• Designing more robust experiments which will, in turn, help us design an effective scale model 

At this point, it is tricky to specifically mention outcomes as we are not exactly sure of the content and learnings we will be exposed to during the 12 weeks. In any case, we expect significant changes to the app and content and the way in which we implement its use in schools and home settings.