Save The Children India, ECCE, Mumbai

Early Childhood Education in India is undergoing a marked growth. With increased understanding of how rapidly a young child's brain develops, there is increased focus on providing experiential opportunities and closely working with families and teachers to help enable a supportive environment. Yet, due to the social sector divide within India, children from urban slum communities are left far behind. Having closely worked within these communities for the past 30 years, the solutions we propose are

1. Mechanisms to enhance the child’s ability to think about his/her own thinking.

2. Maintaining a consistent channel of Parent involvement by creating a Parent Resource (which will also serve as a parent education tool)

3. Creating an Open Resource of Early Childhood Education Material made available to Early Childhood Educators/Teachers in their local languages.

Scaled globally, this will yield improved learning by involving the three crucial stakeholders (young child, parent and teacher) closely.

In India, 19 % of the total population are children below the age of 14. Within that approximately 7% of the children are in the age group of 3 to 5 years. These figures are based on census data. Within this 7%, almost 60% of the children belong to the marginalized communities. 40% of the children in this age group find themselves in supportive, nurturing environments based on their spending power. The contrast is marked in marginalized communities; children are mostly first generation learners, parents play a rather disconnected role in their education, teachers in these setups are often under qualified, lacking early childhood education understanding themselves. In order to provide equal opportunities to young children we propose

1. Making metacognitive activity processes accessible to the teacher will enable her to directly improve child learning.

2. Creating a parent education tool that will better support child learning

3. Teachers from the disadvantaged background are cutoff from the mainstream access of the resource pool of the sector owing to their low educational qualifications and low incomes. There is an immense need to provide more opportunities to access open resources in their local languages.

Our work as an organisation within the early childhood education setup has mainly focused on looking to improve the holistic development of young children in the lower socioeconomic strata of our society. Over 30 years of concentrated work in this sector, has given us a clear understanding of the existing needs, concerns, and challenges that present itself within the population we work with. In young children any advancement in learning or cognitive development is possible only if all points of the triad are suitably strengthened. The three points of this triad being the young child at the apex and the parent and the teacher being the other two points. Technologically building a child's ability to improve his or her own thinking (meta-cognition) needs to be suitably bolstered by strengthening both parent involvement and providing access to early childhood educators with a variety of resource.

Currently the solution being a conceptual framework. 

We have put together the following framework in place.

We are viewing the solution in a three pronged approach, looking at closely involving all the three key stakeholders (children, parent and teacher) in an interconnected, and a responsive circuit. 

Metacognition is a process that enables a child to think about his/her own thinking. Experiential learning opportunities must be provided at this age group to support the immense brain development happening at this stage. Teachers need to be suitably equipped with using metacognitive skills in the classroom.

Since a child spends almost 70% of their time with parents, parents knowledge and understanding plays a crucial role. However in the lower socio economic strata of society this awareness is completely absent.

Most of the Early Childhood Education material caters to English speakers, an open resource of early childhood education material in local languages is the need of the hour, particularly for teachers from these setups. 

Having continuously worked with this population of young children, parents and teachers we feel better equipped to acknowledge their core needs. Very few solutions will recognize the need for addressing all the three dimensions of the early childhood education setup closely to achieve maximum learning outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence

Cell phone based app

Social Networking

Tabs

If the three crucial stakeholders (young child, parent and teacher) are provided with the necessary support within their existing setup and respond positively; it will lead to increased learning outcomes in young children, thereby leading them to transitioning into formal schooling more successfully and eventually becoming contributing members of society. 

We will be serving

In Year 1: 1000-1200 young children, 2000-2400 parents, 50 teachers

In Year 5: 100,000 children, 200,000 parents, 2500 teachers

Our immediate goal in the coming year would be pilot our process in our self run 50 centres, and based on the key learning and reworks we would like to scale it up across states with close partnerships with the local government.

In Year 1, the two barriers we prominently see are

Financial: Subject to availability of funds

Technical: Being in the conceptual stage, the translation is crucial to enable tool design

Based on the understanding received from the pilot in Year 1, we would be able to closely understand the barriers that may present itself 5 years from now.

In Year 1, the two barriers we prominently see are

Financial: Subject to availability of funds

The solution would be to pilot in a small population, and based on the success of that we can extend it to a larger group. Thereby making the investor see its overall impact.

Technical: Being in the conceptual stage, the translation is crucial to enable tool design

By collaborating with a experienced technological partner, we can much reduce the concern of this particular barrier.

Currently since our solution is in a conceptual stage we have a team of 5+ full time members, once the solution moves to the in process stage we will expand to have a team of 30+ full time members in Year one.

Being strongly rooted within our working population (lower income-socially disadvantaged children within the urban slum communities) with over 30+ years of field experience within the early childhood care and education set up, we do have an unique edge. We are well aware of the various setbacks faced by our population. And the team consists of qualified early childhood educationists and human developmentalists. Cognitive development in young children can only be achieved in a nurturing environment. This environment is only possible by closely connecting the three integral stakeholders of the early childhood care and education setup; the child, the parents/caregiver, and the teacher. Understanding this solution closely is what gives us an ability to be able to solve this problem.

Government/Municipal Corporations

Local CSR partners

International Grant Making Agencies (Educo)

Universities/Educational Institutions as knowledge partners and resource partners

Our Business model is robust and closely looks at involving the three key stakeholders aiming at high results of connectivity and nurturing for the young child aiming at achieving improved cognitive development. We have analysed our business model on the 7P formula which is as follows

1. Product: The product is our proposed solution which will address increased cognitive development and learning outcomes by involving the three most essential dimensions of the early childhood setup.

2. Price: The price for the consumers of the solution will be nil or zero, its return on investment (ROI) will result in increased volumes of impact.

3. Promotion: By involving the three key stakeholders at grass root level, the primary source of promotion will be word of mouth and through social media and advertising.

4. Place: Urban/Semi Urban slum communities the Corporation run schools

5. Packaging: Technology based tools and apps using Artificial Intelligence and Networking devices

6. Positioning: This will be a new brand model that we intend to develop reaching out at connecting the most crucial players in early childhood education impacting high volumes of success through a large number of satisfied consumers

7. People: Our Core Team of Experts of Early Childhood Educationists and Experts from the sector.

We hope to receive our funds from a combination of sustained donations and grants, selling products or services, raising investment capital.

Our solution will need AI, and hand held tabs to help improve the cognitive development in young children by working on all the three stakeholders of this setup; the child, the parent/caregiver, and the teacher. This solution implementation clearly has the potential to impact the life of the very marginalized populations of the urban slum community, who are in most cases, first generation learners. We will be able to implement this solution with ease once we are better supported technologically, it will then be possible to scale this to extend even into the rural disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Technology partner for App Building and Designing 

E-Marketing Strategists