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Multimedia kit for crisis contexts with effective & localized learning videos, songs, activities & curriculum, adaptable to different tech.  Written by Nisha Ligon

                                                                                                                           
What problem does your innovation solve?

The UN estimates that 25 million children are missing out on school in areas of conflict and crisis. Yet education is not something that can be paused then resumed when situations settle. Early childhood and early adolescence are periods of extensive brain development, and the learning that occurs in these years sets a person’s trajectory for life.

 In conflict and displacement situations where formal schooling is not possible, or of low quality, we need rapidly deployable informal learning.

Explain your innovation.

Ubongo’s innovation is a multimedia learning kit with localized and effective content, which can be used to facilitate learnings clubs for children in emergencies. The kits contains video, audio and text content including Ubongo’s popular edutainment programs currently watched in over 5.1 million households in East Africa, as well as a facilitator’s guide and activities for club leaders to engage kids in active learning.

Ubongo’s preschool edu-cartoon Akili and Me helps 3-5 year olds learn numeracy, pre-literacy, socio-emotional skills and English as a second language, shown to have a 12% effect on kids’ school readiness in just one month of viewing. Ubongo Kids teaches STEM subjects and life skills through fun stories and songs, and kids who watch it show immediate direct learning outcomes in the subjects taught. These multiplatform learning programs include over 1690 minutes of video content, 580 minutes of educational audio and songs and 36 eBooks, with content in Kiswahili, Kinyarwanda, English and French, as well as easy adaptation packages to quickly develop versions in new languages.

We will first implement with children in Nyaragusu refugee camp, working with the community to form locally managed kids’ clubs that use our content both at existing sites with screening tech (like video bandas that show football matches) and in new sites with low-cost battery powered projectors. This low cost model can be sustained through community partnerships & sponsorship.

Who benefits?

We will bring educational content to almost 30,000 refugee children aged 3-15 by implementing our innovative screening clubs in the Nyaragusu refugee camp in Tanzania. These children come mostly from Burundi and the DRC, or are born in the camps to refugee parents, who mostly speak Kiswahili and Kirundi. In addition to being educational effective, our content is designed to shift gender norms, promote gender equality to audiences of both girls and boys.

Our facilitator kits are linguistically adaptable and mobile, so through partnerships, a larger number of refugee children to benefit from the localized and effective learning content. In order to test the benefit of our screening clubs we will do baseline, mid-term and endline testing. Testing will include standardized assessments of literacy, numeracy and life skills, as well as focus groups.

How is your innovation unique?

Our focus is on creating the best and most effective content, which is locally relevant to kids and can help them learn, then leverage their learning to change their lives. We employ a human centered design process to create content, testing it throughout the process to ensure it is educationally effective– and we design for scalability and adaptability to different languages and technology platforms.

 Our edutainment clubs have already been implemented and tested in non-electrified villages in Morogoro, reaching thousands of kids, and are broadcasting on TV and radio to over 5 million. We will adapt our kit to meet the needs of children in Nyaragusu camp, and develop a model for adaptation to other emergency situations.

 Most other programs edu-media focus on provision of hardware such as computers or tablets, and using open educational resources that aren’t localized. We flip that model, providing localized content that can be used on any tech- from radio and TV to tablets.

What are some of your unanswered questions about the idea?

One of the key questions that we are still working to answer is how to create localized content for a multilingual population. We currently have bilingual content, but in emergencies, children speaking many different languages often need to be taught together.

 Another question we have relates to how we can develop content that inspires children to continue learning as they play outside of the classroom or our screening clubs? We want the learning that happens through our edutainment to be a spark for continued active group and self learning through, and we will test ways of modeling and instigating these learning behaviors through our edutainment content.

Tell us more about you.

Ubongo is a non-profit social enterprise based in Tanzania that produces edutainment for kids in Africa. One of Fast Company’s 10 most innovative companies in Africa 2015, we’re a diverse group of creatives, educators, techies and business people passionate about bringing kids in Africa a fun and more effective new way to learn. Core team members include Nisha Ligon (CEO – product dev, educational media), Doreen Kessy (social business), Christina Bwana (production) and Rajab Semtawa (animation).

What is the primary type of emergency setting where your innovation would operate?

• Natural disaster
• Prolonged displacement

Emergency Setting – Elaborate

Our primary implementation setting will be prolonged displacement, where large numbers of children are together missing out on critical educational opportunities. We also want to make our screening kits so easily accessible and adaptable that they can be quickly used in other emergency settings. Working with first responders who will help us best understand how the clubs can help bring educational material to children who are living in other emergency situations.

Where will your innovation be implemented?

We will first implement in Nyaragusu camp in Western Tanzania. As of June 2017, Nyaragusu has 134,696 refugees. (UNHCR, 2017). It was opened in 1996 to host people fleeing from Burundi and DRC, as well as some refugees from Somalia.

Our screening kits will be highly adaptable to be used in various emergency settings. The kits can be used to get localized content for larger educational or edtech projects or they can be implemented by the local community themselves, as in our Morogoro project.

Experience in Implementation Country(ies)

• Yes, for more than one year.

In-country Networks

Ubongo is Tanzania based, with a strong brand and network in country. Our adaptable content is already distributed on TV in 27 African countries, as well as through mobile network operators including Tigo and Vodacom. We have partnered with USAID and HDIF and are in contact with local teams from UNHCR, IRC, and other organizations working on the ground in refugee camps. Our strong local network provides us with broad insight as well as partnerships for scaling to reach more children in need.

Sector Expertise

• I’ve worked in a sector related to my innovation for less than a year.

Sector Expertise – Elaborate

We are Africa’s leading edutainment company, and our educational media programs on TV, radio and mobile are used across the continent, including by partners working in emergency situations. We are based in Tanzania, with partners across the continent. With this background and expertise, we are well poised to take the next step to adapt our innovations for large scale use in emergency situations, and apply our human centered design process to ensuring we create solutions that work for kids.

Innovation Maturity

• Existing Prototype or Pilot: I have tested a part of my solution with users and am iterating.

Organization Status

• We are a registered non-profit, charity, NGO, or community-based organization.

Organization Location

We are a non-profit social enterprise registered in Tanzania, with main office in Dar es Salaam. We also have USA registered 501(c)3 non-profit entity

Website

http://www.ubongo.co

http://www.youtube.com/ubongokids

http://www.youtube.com/akilikiswahili

http://www.facebook.com/ubongokids

http://www.facebook.com/akilikiswahili

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Click here to read and download:  https://ubongo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Global-Innovation-Exchange.pdf

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