In Nov 2021, they hit their 2 million lessons milestone, and are on track to cross the 3 million lessons mark by March 2022.
Solve Education! today announces the celebration of 2 million lessons delivered through their core programmes – the “Dawn of Civilization”, an AI-driven educational mobile game and its supporting Telegram chatbot, “Ed the learning bot”. This is only the beginning of Solve Education!’s continued commitment to bringing English literacy and effective education to its learners. Solve Education! has worked closely with partners in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, and various countries in Asia and across the globe to target today’s youths regarding English literacy and bigger issues like employment.
“We are thrilled to reach this milestone in 2021, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. Moving forward, we want to multiply our impact by working with institutions, foundations and leaders, so that we can reach learners of all socio-economic backgrounds, as well as have the resources that we need to develop learning technology into its full potential,” said Janine Teo, CEO and co-founder of Solve Education.
Bridging the employment gap for millions of young people
By 2030, there will be an estimated global talent shortage of 85.2 million skilled workers. Given the pool of unemployed youths, there is an obvious mismatch between the globalised job market and the new generation of available workers. The disconnect is further emphasized when capable youths, especially in rural areas, do not have access to the right employers to verify and share their skills. To effectively unlock the potential of these young people, the Solve Employment! programme links them up with companies who are looking to hire talents, while their educational programmes – DoC, Ed the Learning Bot, and Learnalytics – aim to equip users with the right skill sets.
This year, the company is excited to embark on new projects to touch the lives of more children in Asia. They have already rolled out several programmes in collaboration with institutions everywhere. One notable project is the recent learn-and-play English language learning programme with the West Java Government in Indonesia.. The pilot programme targeted 10 schools in the Bandung District in West Java to help youths brush up on their English skills through the Dawn of Civilization platform. In Singapore, Solve Education! is also working closely with Yayasan Mendaki to enhance the learning motivation of children using gamified learning in the Dawn of Civilization application. The MENDAKI programme mostly targets the bottom 30% of the Malay population in Singapore and aims to provide early assistance to the beneficiaries so that they will be school-ready and future-ready.
“There is an opportunity now for education to tap in on the momentum of digital transformation to create more effective solutions, such as through DoC. Our partnership with Solve Education! is one that looks at sustainable outcomes for learners that will eventually follow them through their lives, careers, and the following generations to come,” shared Ms Indah Dwianti, Head of the Digital Services and Information Section of West Java Government (JABAR Digital Services).
Empowering the Next-Gen workforce with the right knowledge and skills
Globally, 621 million youths aged 15 to 24 are not in education, employment or training (NEET). The same UN report revealed that an estimated one billion youths that will enter the labour market in the next decade will face irregular or informal employment. These numbers highlight the worrying global unemployment crisis especially prevalent in developing countries where 90% of all young people reside. The issue of securing employment for the Next-Gen workforce in these communities can be attributed to a lack of English, job and soft skills. Hence, Solve Education! seeks to impact these youth demographics and give them access to quality education, through interactive and data-driven learning on Dawn of Civilization, Ed the Learning Bot, and a dedicated analytics portal, Learnalytics.
Solve Education! co-founders Peng T. Ong and Janine Teo saw the need for a mindset change towards learning in order to create a sustainable and scalable model for education. By encouraging young people to become lifelong learners on the platforms, or ‘Solvies’, Solve Education! seeks to challenge the status quo of less-developed communities, such as having the next-gen leaving the education system for informal employment at a young age.
“By solving the issues facing education, it sets the foundation for solving many other world issues like gender inequality and climate change. We want to use our platform as a catalyst to impart knowledge to a new generation of leaders and change-makers – once a child can read, write and understand wider concepts, we can teach them so many other things like communication and leadership. So that is our starting point: to give them the basic knowledge they need to be workforce-ready. It all goes back to education,” shares Janine Teo.
