The idea for Team4Tech was born in 2012, when Julie Clugage and Lila Ibrahim, witnessed the “transformative power of education”: Julie worked in a school in rural Guatemala while Lila worked in an orphanage in Lebanon. After working closely for years at Intel Corporation, to advance education and economic development through technology, they launched the Intel Education Service Corps in 2009. This program was met with incredible support as a large number of Intel employees began volunteering their time and expertise to the improvement of education.

In September 2012, they had another idea: creating a platform accessible to talented professionals from a variety of technological companies, to improve the quality of education around the world. With this in mind, in May 2013, they launched their first project in Kenya with a total of nine volunteers. The plan was to introduce an adaptive learning software solution to increase the education level of the primary school children. Within six months of this implementation, the students had doubled their literacy test scores. Since this project, Team4Tech has engaged in many similar projects, broadening their impact on education standards. One such project was run in November, 2016, in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh by Dawn Kwan, the project manager for Team4Tech.

VMware and Udaan Mewat Teachers

She led a project with CARE India's Udaan Mewat school where a team of VMware employees brought technology to augment the teaching and learning objectives for a residential bridge-building school for girls, who had previously dropped out of school. Udaan Mewat is an innovative 11-month program where a group of 80 girls complete Grades 1 - 5 through innovative teaching methods, and continue their studies in government schools. After 5 weeks of preparation, the VMware volunteers spent a week in Mewat, showing the teachers how to use the technology provided - building long term sustainability of the equipment.

One of the tools used in this program was Pratham Books' StoryWeaver. Dawn taught three of CARE India’s master trainers, who work with government lower and upper primary school teachers (giving them a reach of over 1000 teachers and 50,000 students), how to use StoryWeaver. She reported that they “loved StoryWeaver's wealth of stories, the ability to translate and the ease of creating new stories.”

CARE India trainers learning about StoryWeaver

She also shared Varseena's story with us. A student in the first batch who had graduated from Udaan Mewat, Varseena learned how to use StoryWeaver. “She's extremely bright and created a story, and taught her story to the rest of the Udaan students”. Varseena will play a continuous role in the implementation of StoryWeaver since she was asked to teach the teachers how to use the platform. On the last day, one of the teachers even used a downloaded Pratham Books story in her class.

Team4Tech has clearly made a lot of progress in bettering the education system all over the world through their programs and outreach. The existence of platforms like StoryWeaver and KA Lite (an offline version of Khan Academy - also used by Team4Tech) makes this job easier and more fun for the students. The technological aspect of this is what excites people the most and, in a world where electronic devices have taken over lives, introducing education via technology engages the audience more than anything else. This is why, although few in number, organisations like Team4Tech are successful in completing their goals.

Be the first to comment.

---

About Pratham Books

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India.

In 13 years, we have published over 3000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards. Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, our digital platform that hosts stories in 60 languages. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free.

At Pratham Books, we are shaping a new, innovative approach to multilingual publishing because we believe that every child needs good books to read in a language of their choice.

Job Description

We are looking for an Outreach Manager who can forge strategic partnerships to facilitate the use of StoryWeaver’s digital resources with organizations that have programs which promote reading and learning among children. The Manager will be responsible for strategizing and executing plans to increase the user base of StoryWeaver and also provide the necessary training and support to the partner network. The Manager will also work with the internal team to shape and guide strategies based on partner inputs and feedback.

Key Responsibilities

Identify potential partners and strategize, design and execute plans to onboard them as StoryWeaver users.        

• Create and execute robust work plans for achieving monthly, quarterly and annual goals    

• Provide training and support to the partner network    

• Provide information and feedback to the internal team based on partner feedback and essentially be a bridge between the internal and external stakeholders

• Help with research and documentation for impact assessment

Qualifications

• Post Graduate Degree

• 5+ years plus work experience in Sales, Marketing, Outreach or related areas.

• Experience in a programmatic function in the development sector

• Exceptional interpersonal and verbal/written communication skills

• Ability to gather data, analyze information, and prepare reports and documents

• Strong  program planning and implementation skills.

Location: This role is based out of Delhi and is full-time.

Salary: Compensation will be commensurate with experience. Interested candidates are requested to send in their resume to [email protected] with the subject line – Outreach Manager

Be the first to comment.

---

Communities Rising runs after school programs for children attending government primary schools in underserved rural villages in the Villupuram District of Tamil Nadu. When they started their  new reading program, Betsy McCoy, founder and President of Communities Rising asked the students "How many of you ever read books for pleasure?" Not a single student said yes. Fast forward two years, and a totally different picture has emerged.

“All of our students are reading every day; story books, non-fiction books, biographies, all kinds of books. They are discovering the joy of reading! Without StoryWeaver, this remarkable change in our students’ reading habits would not have been possible.” shared Betsy.

Communities Rising was struggling to find beginner reader books in English and Tamil that the children would enjoy reading at affordable prices. Plus, they discovered that once their student’s were bitten by the reading bug, they could not keep up with their voracious appetite for books!

StoryWeaver’s relationship with Communities Rising started earlier this year, when they attended one of a workshop and demonstration in Bangalore.  Through StoryWeaver, Communities Rising has access to a wealth of books in both English and Tamil, which they can download quickly and print to share with children. StoryWeaver also provides them a choice of titles in a variety of genres, including books on STEM subjects. If a particular title is not available in Tamil, they can translate it to Tamil on the platform itself and have it ready for the children to be enjoyed.

“We especially love the bilingual books printed in both Tamil and English that allow our students to read in both languages on the same page. These books are a tremendous help with comprehension - it's like getting two books for the price of one!” said Betsy.

Communities Rising have downloaded all of the StoryWeavers titles in levels 1 and 2 in English, and levels 1-3 in Tamil. They are in the process of printing and distributing one set of all these titles to each of their 6 centres, thus reaching 360-400 students.

“We tried printing the books in two formats. One with single pages hole punched and attached with rings and the second with the pages stapled in the center. Durability is an issue and so we printed samples on heavy, card stock.” shared Betsy.

     

Creating Super Readers

The organisation believes that reading makes children learners for life and encourages reading in a big way in their after school programme. Each child is assigned a 'book box' which contains books that he/she must read each week - in both English and Tamil.  Children are incentivised to read through the SuperReader program which has been developed by Communities Rising.

“Each student has a CR reading necklace. They get a bead for each book that their teacher certifies they have actually read. After reading 10 books, they get ‘Readers Are Leaders’ pencils, and after 20 books, they get pins that proclaim them ‘CR Super Readers’. I'm happy to say that we are giving our many pencils.” said Betsy who believes that the necklaces, reading pencils and Super Reader pins help build a sense of community and sense of belonging to Communities Rising amongst the children.

 

                A CR Super Reader necklace.

At the end of the year, the top readers from each center will travel to Chennai to visit Tara Boks for a program there and the top reading center will have a book party!

“Last year, I told some of our kids, that I was looking forward to hearing complaints from their parents that they were spending too much time reading, instead of playing or helping at home. We aren’t quite there yet, but with the help of StoryWeaver, I have no doubt those complaints aren't far away.” said Betsy.

We look forward to hearing those complaints too!

You can follow Communities Rising on FaceBook. If you’re an organisation working with young children and feel that StoryWeaver could benefit them, please write to us at [email protected]. Do remember to add Freedom to Read in the subject line!

comments (2)

---