AlterYouth

Globally, 250 million children are not in school. Among them, one group never enrolled in school and the other group was once in school but are no longer in school because they dropped out. The problem we are solving is the latter, dropouts in schools. 

In Bangladesh, schools are free and 98% children enroll in schools. However, 14% of children drop out before completing primary school due to poverty. This is approximately 2 million children who grow up illiterate, unable to harness the power of the internet in their lifetimes. Only if we could prevent these dropouts, at least until completion of primary school, Bangladesh could become a fully literate nation. 

So why are children dropping out? Despite schools being free in Bangladesh, children drop out to either work and earn meager amounts trying to support their families, or are married off as children to relieve their families from the little costs required to sustain them. UNESCO says free schooling does improve admission however, further incentive is needed to keep dropout rates low.

Globally school dropouts are one of the fundamental reasons behind gaps in learning and educational opportunities. Even though we are initially addressing school dropouts in Bangladesh, our solution is a remarkably scalable one which can address the global school dropout problem. Global primary school completion rate is at 85 percent with a majority of school dropouts happening in the least economically developed countries, according to the UN.

Since children drop out of school for an income, the logical solution is a higher income opportunity at school. 

Just as there are 2 million children in Bangladesh who drop out of schools and grow up illiterate due to poverty, Bangladesh also has the 6th largest diaspora of 15 million living in advanced economies worldwide who wish to see a better homeland. AlterYouth is a P2P scholarship platform, imagine Uber for scholarships, bridging the two groups through scholarships to prevent dropouts and eradicate illiteracy from Bangladesh. 

Just like any other P2P app, AlterYouth has two sides: The AlterYouth School app, which enables teachers of Government Primary Schools in Bangladesh to onboard their schools onto the platform and apply for scholarships for their students from poverty affected families. And on the other end, the AlterYouth app which enables users from any part of the world to directly offer their own scholarships to those students and prevent them from dropping out of school. 

When a scholarship starts, the mother of the student receives a mobile phone with a mobile bank account. Each scholarship is USD 12.5/month, transferred directly through mobile banking to the mother of the child, contingent upon 75% attendance and marks in class by the student. With a higher income opportunity now at school, it prevents the family from choosing work/marriage for their child and instead focuses on ensuring their child's class attendance to receive the monthly scholarship. It continues until completion of class 5, ensuring a literate citizen for the world. Users can also view their student’s school report cards and class attendance on their app.

UNESCO lists both scholarships and monetary incentives as effective tools for combating dropout rates and says there could be a link between monetary incentives and households encouraging their kids to attend school regularly. Regular attendance further reduces dropouts from poor progression in learning and achievement.

With 98% of children in Bangladesh already enrolling in schools, enabling the 15 million Bengali diaspora to support the 2 million potential dropouts in public schools of Bangladesh with scholarships and preventing them from dropping out can establish the first fully literate generation for the nation, turning Bangladesh into a literate country by its people themselves.

More importantly, AlterYouth is basically an app where users can provide scholarships directly to financially struggling students and prevent dropouts. The existence of both sides are in every nation and thus the model can be replicated in every country, like Uber/Airbnb. When we operate globally, schools in any nation can digitally onboard themselves onto the app. It shall enable nations worldwide to educate their own populations. 

AlterYouth onboards students of Government Primary schools in rural Bangladesh as scholarship applicants. The vast majority of students in these schools and their family members by default live on less than $5/day. However, for students to be eligible scholarship candidates on AlterYouth, they must fall under any of the following objective criteria: 

i) Student has a disabled father 

ii) Student has a single mother 

iii) Student is an orphan 

These criteria have been developed over the past 6 years of the founder’s experience in working with these schools and drawn from their dropout data. Looking closely into the principle behind them, they essentially target students from families without an income earning father. In Bangladesh, fathers are traditionally the income earners and their absence almost certainly results in dire poverty for the family members, living below $2/day. And these are the families who unfortunately are forced to send their children to work or for marriage. The UN states that in low-income countries, the primary school completion rate is 34 per cent for children from the poorest 20 percent of households, which our criteria are specifically designed to target.

As such, every scholarship started on the AlterYouth app is a $12.5/month increase in income for families headed by mothers who live on less than $2 a day. It ensures children in classrooms who could have otherwise dropped out to work.

Moreover, it empowers mothers with mobile phones and bank accounts, on which they receive the monthly scholarship, giving them control over finances, security, healthcare, independence and access to further entrepreneurship opportunities. More importantly, it keeps their children at school until completion by offering a higher income at school than at work, resulting in an educated child with a higher income potential as an adult. AlterYouth  advances UN SDG 1, SDG 4, SDG 5 and SDG 10.

As for our team, it would be passion and grit. AlterYouth is a technology-startup founded by four young students of Economics, Business, Marketing and Computer Science, who were determined to develop Bangladesh after finishing college home and abroad. We are all born and raised in Bangladesh and when visiting first world countries for college, we first witnessed how prosperous human civilization can be with the right economic opportunity for all. It started not as a business venture, but a determined mindset to make Bangladesh feel like abroad; later turning into a business model to sustain in the long run. We spent 9 years on-the-ground visiting & researching in schools, learning from teachers and parents across hundreds of villages, finding ways to battle dropouts and have a deep understanding of rural schools in Bangladesh. Our first batch of 20 scholarship recipients were funded by ourselves in order to trial and error the policies and processes required to prevent them from dropping out. Since then, we have now grown into a company with over 2,600 scholarships across 350+ schools and prevented 1000+ school dropouts till date. Both our teachers app and user app was developed over years with countless iterations based on inputs coming directly from these stakeholders. 

The team designed, coded, implemented and marketed the innovation in-house and developed partnerships to scale. Expanding into a now 11 member team, we attracted highly skilled individuals determined to turn Bangladesh into a literate country; the vision of the company. 

From an idea being discussed by 4 college students, we now have:

The “Asia Pacific SDG Enterprise Award” from United Nations Development Programme 

Pre-seed funding and free office space from ICT Ministry, GoB

Partnership with the Ministry of Primary and Mass education, GoB 

AlterYouth also won the "Google Business Group Stories" program. We were invited to Google HQ in California and the Google team also visited Bangladesh and produced a documentary on our work. 

We have selected the growth stage for AlterYouth because till date:

1- We have crossed the 1,000 paying users/month boundary for our app, which is a popular predictor of solid product market fit for startups. 

2- We are currently serving 2,600+ students and their families as scholarship recipients/beneficiaries.

3- 1000+ students have already graduated primary school with alteryouth scholarships.

4- 350+ teachers are using the AlterYouth school app.

5- Our business model is established and there is substantial traction. Growth through international partnerships & collaboration is our primary objective now.

AlterYouth is at a turning point, having dedicated years to product development and testing, a full-scale global launch is imminent. Our team understands that external sources play a significant role in our success and acknowledges the potential of partnerships from MIT Solve network and its possible role in helping us achieve a more educated world.

The 9-month program presents an opportunity for evaluation and review of our business and operating procedures by fellow solvers in similar/adjacent fields. It is our belief that improvements in efficiency can be facilitated, especially for scaling. We are aware of the importance of leveraging MIT's extensive network to cultivate meaningful relationships. Predecessors in our fields will help provide valuable insight into the challenges and opportunities facing our sector while helping identify best practices to improve our work.

As our product nears completion, our vision for AlterYouth extends beyond its current scope. Strategic partnerships are needed for achieving and sustaining growth, as well as integrating additional features, such as offering supplementary educational tools. Integration of additional features also opens doors to possibilities for partnerships with our peers in the education field. An example of a possible partnership could be contemporaries that specialize in online learning and tutoring platforms/devices. A mutually beneficial partnership such as this would help us ensure that every graduating student achieves their expected learning outcomes while our partners benefit from widespread adoption of their technology. This is only one of many possible partnerships we could aim for if granted access to the Solver network. Moreover, with the objective to expand our operations in multiple countries, forming partnerships in order to enable that is a priority as well and we look forward to the Solver network to achieve that. The prime objective, leverage international partnerships to maximize our impact.

Furthermore, the Solve program offers more than just evaluation; it also provides exposure, furthering our efforts to gain recognition within our target audience. While we achieved initial traction through grassroots efforts and social media engagement, the endorsement of MIT Solve and access to its marketing expertise hold promise for elevating our company profile and expanding our reach. Promotion of the AlterYouth brand through MIT’s vast social networks also allows us to gain recognition enabling more opportunities for collaboration. 

We also recognize the importance of accurately measuring the impact of our initiatives. While we do have small scale data from our current operations, our capacity and knowledge for research and analytics is limited. With Solve's support, we anticipate deeper insights into the societal and economic impact of our program, facilitating the refinement of our service.

Lastly, participation in MIT Solve is also a means to access additional funding opportunities required for growth and achieving scale in impact. Securing the necessary financial resources is essential, while learning the way to secure financial resources is also important, to ensure our long-term sustainability. MIT's guidance and potential access to future funding sources will ensure that AlterYouth remains well-positioned to make a substantive contribution in our field.

Primarily, AlterYouth is the world’s first P2P scholarship app. It matches and transfers scholarships from users to students automatically, contingent upon educational and attendance requirements, which are logics incorporated into the software. 

Every human being has an innate desire to help others, while every human being deserves the right to education and the opportunities education brings with it as well. AlterYouth enables the desire to be met in a transparent, efficient, scalable and conveniently digital manner while ensuring the right to education for deserving students.

One of the most widely used tools by governments globally to prevent dropouts in schools is conditional cash transfers for education (CCTE), which is a proven and effective method. However, the total program budgets are expensive and governments of developing nations may not always be able to afford extensive programs.

Scholarships through the AlterYouth app are essentially conditional cash transfers for education (CCTE). AlterYouth’s unique technology now enables individuals from any part of the world to directly fund CCTEs for students in villages of Bangladesh from their phone. This establishes a new financing mechanism for CCTEs, expanding the funding base substantially, increasing remittance flows and enabling CCTEs to impact a lot more people. These families are also counseled every month, increasing their engagement with school, which has also shown to reduce dropouts. 

More importantly, AlterYouth enables direct transfers from users to student’s families through mobile banking. This is a groundbreaking change since the existing similar models consist of organizations accepting donations, accumulating it and then funding their own programs for beneficiaries. In this method, traditional donors are unable to view exact receipt of funds by end beneficiaries. The direct transfer component of our innovation shall cause a paradigm shift in this landscape. App users are also able to view school report cards and attendance of their scholarship recipients directly on their app, ensuring transparency in monitoring.

Apart from that, our innovation brings about scalability on an unprecedented level. We significantly reduce red tape, as teachers can digitally onboard their schools and students onto the platform. It empowers teachers to take a proactive role in preventing dropouts in their schools. And users can use the app from anywhere in the world to offer their own scholarships to those students. 

The existence of both groups are in every nation and thus AlterYouth is replicable for widespread adoption across any country. The vision is to exist internationally just like other P2P apps, such as Uber/Airbnb. 

We shall enable nations worldwide to educate their own populations.

The ultimate outcome of AlterYouth is: 

Children affected by poverty in Bangladesh are not dropping out of school.

Activities:

AlterYouth team creates awareness about the AlterYouth school app among school teachers in Bangladesh.

AlterYouth team launches awareness campaigns targeting the Bengali diaspora regarding the AlterYouth app.

AlterYouth team mobilizes all logistics required for scholarships initiated on the platform by users.

The AlterYouth software transfers scholarship from user to student contingent upon 75% attendance and passing marks in class by the student until completion of school.

Output:

Teachers download the AlterYouth school app and apply for scholarships for students of their schools who are from poverty affected families.

Users download the AlterYouth app and start scholarships for those students.

Student’s families receive mobile phones and open their mobile bank accounts.

Students attend school regularly and their families ensure it as well in order to continue receiving their monthly scholarships until completion of school.

Outcome:

Teachers find dropout rates fall in their schools.

Users satisfy their desire to help others and contribute to the development of their homeland.

Student’s families achieve financial inclusion and independence.

Students affected by poverty remain in school and their quality of life increases with higher incomes from the scholarships.

AlterYouth's impact goals as of now are the following three:

• Children affected by poverty are staying in school and not dropping out to work

• Teachers are proactively working to prevent dropouts in their schools

• Women in rural areas are financially included and independent with higher incomes

Our solution and expected impact from the scholarship program clearly align us with UN SDG 1, 4, 5 and 10.

In order to measure our progress towards them, we are using the following indicators:

1- Number of scholarship recipients: This indicates the number of poverty affected children who are currently receiving scholarships, thus are attending school regularly and has not dropped out to work.

2- Number of graduates: This indicates the number of students who have completed school by receiving the scholarship for the full tenure.

3- Number of parents of active scholarship recipients: This indicates the number of mothers/grandmothers who have been provided mobile phones with mobile bank accounts and are actively receiving USD 12.5/month contingent upon their children's attendance in class and passing marks.

4- Number of active schools on the platform: This indicates the number of active teachers who are using the AlterYouth school app and are doing the necessary work on the app to ensure maintenance and continuation of the active scholarships in their school.

We believe this to only be the surface and expect collaborative research and further analysis of our data to yield more accuracy.

The core technologies that power our solution are:

Software, that operates the overall scholarship program connecting all the other technology components including apps

Mobile apps, which teachers and users use

SMS technology, that communicates with teachers and parents

Mobile network, that communicates with teachers and parents

Mobile banking, that enables direct and transparent transfers

We have a team comprising of:

7 full time staff

4 part time staff

6 years.

Here at AlterYouth, our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity serves as a cornerstone of our organizational values. We believe that these principles not only enriches our workplace culture but also drives innovation and success in our mission. Our goal is to create an environment where every individual, irrespective of their background, feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute meaningfully to our initiative.

We actively foster an inclusive work environment characterized by respect and collaboration. Our team consists of individuals from diverse backgrounds, spanning a wide range of ages and academic disciplines and social backgrounds. 

Central to our efforts is the cultivation of diversity within our team. As we expand, we are deliberate in our recruitment practices to ensure a broad representation of perspectives and experiences. Historically, our team has been composed of a handful of members, of which a significant portion have been women in management positions. 

Furthermore, our commitment to gender diversity is evident in our team of Counselors, where women are exclusively represented; this is because over the years our results have shown that students and parents respond best to female counselors. The team of counselors is our fastest growing team in numbers as its requirement is directly proportional to the increase in number of scholarship recipients, and thus AlterYouth shall always be a female led organization. 
Seeing AlterYouths upward trajectory, it is expected for the team to grow in size rapidly. We expect to use this opportunity to continually review our hiring practices and cultivate our workplace to ensure a positive and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.

Although AlterYouth has been in operation for a few years we still have a lot of room for future growth considering our target audience and current trajectory, providing plenty of opportunity for every member of the team to progress in their careers if they choose to do so. There have been a lot of cases where top performing executives have progressed on to supervisor roles. There have even been a handful of cases where after satisfactory performances, the best supervisors have moved on to joining the management team.

A look at the AlterYouth program itself will exhibit how much we value diversity and inclusivity. As mentioned in answers before, the scholarship program is specifically designed to ensure a level playing field for low income women in a male dominated society. Furthermore, our scholarship categories are explicitly designed to target members of society that have been left behind due to economic and/or social constraints. At risk children that are enrolled in the scholarship program in particular, are afforded opportunities to make choices for their future that were absent before.

We recognize that achieving our goals requires continuous evaluation and improvement of our practices. Our journey towards building a more inclusive workplace is ongoing, and we are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.

Our customers are app users who start their own scholarships and our beneficiaries are students and their families who receive the scholarships. Our app provides its users from anywhere in the world, the ability to ensure schooling for a student from a poverty affected family in remote areas of a far away country, within the convenience of their smartphone along with complete financial transparency and digital monitoring of required schooling and educational updates of their student. Moreover, our technology brings down the cost to the user while maximizing the impact per dollar. This is mostly why our user base is continuously growing.    

And here is our revenue model. When a user starts a scholarship on the app, the transfer from the user to the student's family (bank to bank) is $12.5/month. In addition, there is an app service fee (similar to Airbnb) of $2.5/month. This service fee on each scholarship is the revenue stream for AlterYouth, enabling a commercial pathway to scale.

Currently AlterYouth has 2,600+ scholarships active on the platform and our user base is growing daily. All active scholarships can be viewed on our website here: https://www.alteryouth.com/act...

With USD 2.5 service fee/scholarship/month being the revenue model for AlterYouth, breakeven will be reached at 3,000 scholarships, from which point onwards, AlterYouth will become financially sustainable.  

We will then work to spread to every primary school in the nation to achieve the 2 million scholarships required to establish the first fully literate generation of Bangladesh, eradicating illiteracy thereafter. We will also open up to secondary schools, enabling 5 million+ scholarships. With sound generation of evidence, there is also a strong possibility of government adoption and enabling a public pathway to scale. 

Parallelly, we intend to initiate in other developing nations with large diaspora as well, initially India & Pakistan (which also has the largest diaspora populations in the world) and then open to African nations and impact 15+ million lives. AlterYouth is basically an app where individuals can provide scholarships to financially struggling students. The existence of both are in every nation and thus AlterYouth is replicable for widespread adoption. The vision is to exist internationally just like other C2C apps, such as Uber/Airbnb. 

Till date AlterYouth has received seed funding from Startup Bangladesh and grant funding from the Expo Live Program under the World Expo 2020 Dubai, and generated an accumulated revenue of over USD 76,000.