Learning Connected will continue to support SOAS students with working flexibly for global social enterprises this year through participating in remote micro-internships. Find out more about our new cohort of host organisations.

Asikana Network Limited

Asikana Network is a young women’s network that was created with the vision of creating a space for all women and girls in the Tech field. It was formed in 2013 in Kabulonga, Zambia. The network is composed of over 200 active Tech trainer women members with a growing learner base of 25,000. By encouraging women and girls to participate in Tech based careers and courses, they hope to create a community of confident and capable women in the Tech field. Their target groups include high school pupils, university or college students, as well as young women working or seeking participation in ICT related fields. Some of their activities include networking meetups, training sessions in web development, basic computer and digital literacy, games, as well as one-to-one mentoring for women who are interested in Technology.
Find out more here: https://www.asikananetwork.org/

​Assorted Trends Africa
Assorted Trends Africa is a not for profit social enterprise in Kayunga, Uganda. Working with marginalised women and young people in rural Uganda, it aims to empower and encourage community transformation in health education, agriculture and entrepreneurial development. The organisation’s reach includes support of more than 200 rural women’s micro businesses, equipping and training more than 60 rural teenage and young mothers in vocational and business skills. The organisation’s latest sexual reproductive health ad rights schools programme has reached more than 1500 students in rural areas of Uganda.
Find out more here: https://www.facebook.com/assortedtrendsafrica/about
Bramble NetworkBramble is an organisation that supports the physical, emotional, mental and social development of children living in rural and marginalised communities across Africa. Its base is in Ibadan Oyo state, Nigeria. Some of the network’s programmes include Brambox, a programme that supports children who live in remote communities with limited access to the Internet, and Bramble Learning Space, a creative learning space for children to learn based on their unique interests. Starting from a grassroots level, Bramble is creating a network and movement of local rural educators to change the learning space and environment in Nigeria. This network is further supported by research in various aspects of Education, from Early Childhood Education and Care to teacher training, learning models and methods.
Find out more here: https://bramblenetwork.org/
Lakshya Jeevan JagritiLakshya Jeevan Jagriti (LJJ) is a not for profit organisation that supports individuals from a disadvantaged background to acquire skills and knowledge that will enable them to evolve personally and professionally. The organisation was created by a group of college students and their teacher from a distance learning college in 2009 in India. It started by focusing on sharing skills and knowledge on issues that interested the students, creating an open space for conversation. Nowadays, the organisation provides a variety of programmes, from women empowerment programmes, like Aao Sath Maa, to vocational training programmes, like I CAN, and the Personal Mastery Leadership Development for Corporate initiative.
Find out more here: https://www.meralakshya.org/
Mosul SpaceMosul Space is an innovation and tech hub based in Mosul, Iraq. It started in 2014 with the aim to promote entrepreneurship and technology among young men and women in order to develop the private sector and increase youth employment. Its current outreach includes 10,000 young men and women who participate in business incubation programmes, product development, makerspace activities, tech and business specialised training, as well as gain access to co-working areas and community activities. Some of its past events include, “Embedded Systems Design and Market Challenged Forum”, “Electronic Build Sessions” and “Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking Workshops”.
Find out more here: https://mosulspace.org/
Peace Crops (Agri-Life Association)Peace Crops (Agri-Life Association) is a not for profit organisation that supports eco friendly agricultural development. It was created in 2014 in Bova II Village in Cameroon with the aim to support and carry out food security projects, empowerment workshops, and promote environmental conservation practices. Peace Crops works with orphanages, communities, schools, prisons and war-affected communities to create peaceful organic food gardens. Other initiatives include “Earth Rising Indigenous BONAVADA Forest Project”, “Food4All COVID-19 Community Emergency Intervention Program”, “Orphanage Garden COVID-19 Response Project”, “AGROPHAN (Agriculture for Orphanages)” and “BONAVADA Women Community Maize Project”.
Find out more here: https://www.peacecrops.org/
School FarmsSchool Farms is a not for profit organisation which aims to help address the growing burden of supplying highly nutritious, farm-produced crops, fruits and vegetables, to schools in Ghana. It was founded as a community-based organisation in 2013 in Accra, Ghana. Nowadays, School Farms applies an innovative community-supported model and works with schools in growing their own produce, while using the farms as experiential learning spaces. Some of School Farms’ programmes include “ATVET Skills Hub”, providing training, skills development and agriculture extension services to rural young people, “Food Bank”, storing and supplying highly nutritious school farm-produced crops, and “ATVET CBT”, a competency-based training curriculum equipping schoolchildren with agricultural entrepreneurial skills.
Find out more here: https://schoolfarms.org/

​Africa Innovate 2021 was a collaborative online conference-hackathon between Learning Connected and The Africa Centre. It successfully brought together students and professionals across Africa and the UK to compete in a hackathon for sustainable development in Africa from 21–23 July 2021.

We are proud to introduce you to our hackathon winners and participants.


First Place
InfinityLightHouse, Nigeria
An on-demand renewable energy-based power supply for users to keep their portable electronic devices charged.


Second Place
iPop, International
An Augmented Reality mobile app tailored to create a visual version of the curriculum by projecting 3D models of objects in one’s real environment.


Third Place
Health360, Ghana
A web/mobile app platform that will offer users accessibility to online medical care and health tips.


Participants
Genesis, Ghana
A safe online system that matches sponsors with underserved schools in Ghana.


Black coders, Ethiopia
An online symptom checker app that generates probable diagnoses and treatment strategies in Africa.


Witty, International
A multilingual app for the African continent that provides guidelines on waste reduction, segregation, collection and disposal best practices.


To the Stars, South Africa
A platform for people to improve their farming skills by learning with a system to guide them using simple visuals.

Edu.quotes, Egypt
A mobile app that sends university students course-specific questions via messages to maximise student engagement and helps them to succeed.


Red Alert, Kenya
A mobile app that provides farmers with real-time remote alerts to reduce post-harvest loss and makes meals safer.


Participants’ Experiences
Dorothy Orina from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Kenya shared, “We had to work with people in different locations and coordinating that is not the easiest thing, so it was a great learning experience!”


“The hackathon gave me the opportunity to appreciate different perspectives on needed solutions for Africa from experts who are already walking the talk. I got the opportunity to lead my team and connect with great mentors with wonderful perspectives, and that has also been a great experience. I was able to lead a team to develop, pitch and convince the judges to win third place. The belief of being able to make a difference on the continent has been rekindled,” said Edwin Sakyi Kyei-Baffour, MPhil Student from the University of Ghana.
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What Next?
Prizes include mentoring sessions with Tongayi Choto, Co-founder and CEO of AfriBlocks as well as with Takunda Chingonzo, Founder of The Village Innovation Network. Learning Connected will support the winners in taking their ideas forward and will link all participants with local innovation hubs.

In this interview, Todd Baldwin shares why he co-founded the platform Crafted for international food lovers usecrafted.com, @cookwithcrafted

What inspired you to start your own business?
I was always interested in entrepreneurship, but didn’t initially have any venture capitalist or technology startup connections. When I came to Princeton, it became my prerogative to connect with people who were engaging in these spaces. As part of this process, I started a company while still at university that was initially providing solar powered water filtration to developing regions. Over the winter break we built a solar powered water filtration system in Kenya. We later realised the problem was deeper than just producing low cost water filtration. The water needed to be delivered, so we started to focus on finding a solution to getting water delivered to everyone’s doorstep.

During the COVID-19 pandemic I couldn’t travel to Kenya to develop WellPower Technologies. I began thinking about what I wanted to do after college. I asked myself if I wanted a ‘traditional’ job or if I wanted to try something else. At that time, I started to get into cooking with my sister and I watched endless cookery videos. I realised that a lot of the mainstream food shows on the TV didn’t show the food that we grew up with — I’m from the South. Food is so tied to culture and identity. Diverse cultures are not represented in mainstream media. I wanted to build a unique business that solved this problem.
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How did you develop your business idea?
I started talking to more food blogging friends to find out how the system works. I became aware of why food videos from diverse cultures are so hard to find. It’s very hard to drive traffic back to your site unless a large food account posts one of your recipes because they’re catered to the mainstream audience. They don’t give a whole lot of exposure to niche cuisine. I wouldn’t consider African food a niche cuisine — there’s an entire continent of diverse dishes!

What does Crafted do?
Crafted is a live streaming platform for food content creators. Creators can create paid or free live streams on our platform, collect tips, engage with fans through live chat functions, and get booked for private virtual events. Crafted celebrates culture through food. What really excites me is that Crafted empowers others to build small businesses, sustain themselves, do something they love and at the same time share more on their culture. I would really be excited if ten years from now a group of millionaires were created through using Crafted alone.

What have been the main challenges in setting up Crafted?
To date, meeting people and looking for investors online. It is great to meet people consistently in person but it has been so hard to do during the times of COVID-19. We are still fairly young and there are many more challenges to come.
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What pieces of advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Just like Nike, just do it! If it’s not your main gig, really try to work on it on evenings and weekends.

Start small and distill your idea down to a minimum viable product. Think about the simplest way you can prove people want what you’re building. In general, that should only take you a week or two to build. If it’s taking too long than that, you aren’t thinking simple enough, make it as simple as you possibly can. You could make a landing page with a one liner about your company and drive traffic to it. That would be perfect proof in people wanting what you’re trying to build.
Test early. Increased interaction will help you gain confidence in your idea. You’ll feel much better about developing the idea further.

Create a bank of ideas. I have a list of ideas on my phone that I’m constantly adding to as soon as an idea comes to me. I’ve a compilation of hundreds of ideas that I could be working on for a startup. I’ve found it has boosted my creative thinking.

If you have more than one business idea, take a step back and think about what type of business you want to build and why. Do you dream of starting up a venture backable business that scales rapidly or do you want to set up a lifestyle brand? I’d recommend focusing on the idea that has the biggest market opportunity. Which one do you feel you are uniquely-mostly equipped for? Which one is your skill set mostly aligned with? Do you see a path where you can turn the idea into a fast growing company? Whatever you do, you need to be incredibly passionate about it because it’s going to be a long road.
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Todd Baldwin graduated from Princeton University in Chemical Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, he co-founded WellPower Technologies, a company that provided on-demand clean water delivery in Kenya through a smartphone application.

The Literacy Pirates works exclusively with young people who are both falling behind at school and have fewer advantages in their personal circumstances. Did you know that in the UK your socioeconomic background is still the greatest determinant of your educational success? In fact, two in three children living in low-income households in the UK fall below the expected levels in reading and writing by the age of 11. This attainment gap widens further as children transition from primary to secondary school. This results in low self-confidence, slower progress, and a bleak long-term outlook.

This intractable social challenge lies at the heart of The Literacy Pirates reading and writing intervention.
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The Literacy Pirates learning programme is a year-long, after-school learning programme devised and led by teachers. During the weekly session children aged 9 to 12 years old work to improve their reading and writing skills, as well as increase their confidence as learners and ability to persevere and keep on going when things get tough in the classroom. We work exclusively with children referred by their school, who identify children who are both falling behind in their educational attainment and they know have fewer opportunities outside of school. By working with teachers, we access children we couldn’t otherwise reach and we are assured they are the right ones who really need our help.

We have embraced being a venue based, out of school and intense programme by setting the learning programme in a fantastical environment with murals, decking, a Pirate’s cat and secret passageways. The children are given adult volunteer support while a qualified and experience teacher leads the session. And importantly, we know children learn best when working towards tangible, published projects, so each term the young people create high quality published books, films and apps.

Established in 2010, we have worked with 720 children on our intense programme offered in Dalston, Hackney. We are confident in the difference we can make because we have an excellent track record. On joining us at age 9, children are on average 13 months behind their peers; and 24 months behind when they join at age 11. We close this gap by improving their reading age over 50% faster than age-related expectations. Furthermore, 100% of Young Pirates who say they don’t enjoy reading for pleasure at the start of the programme have changed their minds by the end. 95% of parents saw an increase in confidence; and 78% of teachers saw an increase in perseverance in the classroom.
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As an organisation we have now decided to replicate that success in other London boroughs and are working to reach 800 children annually by opening an additional three learning centres or Ships. The first of which opened in January this year in Tottenham, Haringey Pirates. It is an exciting phase of growth in which to reflect on what makes the difference; through all the joy and fun of a learning programme on a Pirate's Ship what actually drives the impact that we see happening through the learning programme?

Our founder was a teacher and the programme devised by teachers. It was designed to align with schools’ goals, working to compliment teachers work in classroom, but not duplicate. We thought carefully about the different elements that we believe drive our impact. One of the central aspects of our Learning Programme is the creation of published projects; books, films and apps that showcase the creative writing of the children.
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Publishing the children’s written work is both motivating and confidence building.

We work for a full year with children, it’s an intense two-and-half hour weekly session. Every term they will produce just two pieces of writing that they have worked really hard to refine. The theme is always close to home, building on who and what they know and love. The learning comes in the process of writing a piece that requires drafting and redrafting. As you can imagine the fatigue can be real for children to go back over their work again and again. That is where the carrot of publishing their work comes in. ‘Let’s work hard on this, because in a month you are going to have that piece of work published in a book and show it off to your Headteacher’ or ‘Keep going, it will be worth it when you hear yourself speak those words on the big screen at the cinema next month’. School often works on delayed gratification, where the reward for hard work comes at the end of the year as a single result or even exam results at the end of a school career. Publishing children’s work, in our experience, gives them immense motivation in the here and now to put in greater effort.

Publishing the children’s writing also boost confidence. Receiving a copy of a high-quality printed book, with your work, name and this year we included photo is massive! How many of us can boast at being published authors or film screen stars! To make the most of this confidence boost, we put on a celebration event every time we publish their work. We invite parents and carers, teachers and Heads as well as local community leaders and funders. These events are a chance to mark the hard work and achievement of the children. In our spirit of being relentlessly positive, the children perform and speak about their achievement, we have our teachers reflect the journey to date and because we are Pirates, we always play a game or two.

The overachieving sentiment at The Literacy Pirates is relentless positivity. We are not much into failure. Though as teachers we know it has a place in education, we are working with children who are not experiencing success in school as other children might. When you have experienced success regularly, finding the energy to keep going and handling set-backs comes more easily. For those that do not experience success regularly at school, it’s much harder to find the confidence and grit to give it ago. That’s why published projects are a key part of learning programme; they allow the children to experience being motivated, achieving success and being appreciated in a genuine way for that achievement.

There is another element to publishing the children’s work which is that it gives us an opportunity to talk about the full cycle of learning and how it feels to succeed. Talking about how we learn, metacognition, is increasingly understood as key to improving outcomes for children at school. The extended time taken over writing projects at The Literacy Pirates means the children experience planning, drafting, redrafting and experiencing success over a term rather than squeezed into a lesson, day or maybe a week. It gives them time to actually experience and reflect on each aspect as it takes place — the excitement at having an idea, the confusion at planning a story, to surprise at creating an interesting character, the exhaustion of working hard at redrafting, the delight and satisfaction at seeing your own work published. We use a Pirates Log at the end of each session to write down What Went Well and what could be Even Better If’s. We challenge the children to think about the extent of their effort over the session, asking them to be honest and reiterating what normal effort looks like compared to intensive effort or at the other end of the spectrum, ‘just showing up’.

Key things to consider with published projects:

1. Quality needs to be really good. Investing in good design and expensive production is important to create something to be treasured for a lifetime.
2. Taking your time. Allow the process of creation as well and the moment of accomplishment to be given time and space it deserves.
3. Make it relevant. Using a recording studio, putting a film on at the cinema plays into popular dreams of success. Making the themes relevant to children’s lives also adds a dimension of ownership and pride.
4. Co-create. Give the children an opportunity to input into the production process — decide on the name, maybe even design elements. Let them write the introduction to the book, give the blurb for the film or write the instructions for an app.
5. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Make sure the ‘published’ part means getting exposure as far and wide as possible and that the accolades pour in.

Like all educational programmes we are complex in nature; weaving together different physical aspects, pedagogical instruments and psychological processes. It took two years to create the focused programme we know today and another two years to develop a Theory of Change and the right measurement tools to monitor the outcomes. No doubt the next two years of replicating our success, will teach us a lot about ourselves too. And we are looking forward to learning those lessons.

A Case Study

Tayo was referred at age 10 to the programme to give him a boost in literacy as he was attaining below age-related expectations. Although he was engaged in the programme right from the start, in sessions he was often very shy and did not like speaking in a group or performing.

By the end of the year, Tayo’s session leader reported an “explosion in confidence”, which was backed up by his teacher and parents. His teacher said “Tayo has really come out of his shell this year and is a visibly more confident boy”. Both Tayo and his parents mentioned that he was no longer afraid to talk in front of a crowd.

During the programme Tayo’s reading age increased over two times faster than age-related expectations giving him a reading age of well over 12 years old. His teacher told us that he was “back on track” at school.
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Tayo told us that before Hackney Pirates “I wasn’t really doing really well. But now I am confident and better at reading and writing.”

Website: www.literacypirates.org
Twitter: @LiteracyPirates
Instagram: literacypirates

The Minerva Schools at KGI were established in 2012 by Ben Nelson with the aim of disrupting higher education. Minerva’s development was driven by a variety of factors including: inequality in college admissions, high college tuition fees and courses that left students less prepared for work. How has Minerva attempted to address these issues?

What sets Minerva’s curriculum apart from those of other universities?

The curriculum imparts universal cognitive skills and frameworks that are valued by employers such as critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communications and interrelation. These are further broken down into 80 habits of mind and foundational concepts. The way students learn them through salient contexts, ranging from food and water scarcity to unbridled scientific and technological advances to complex social and geopolitical dynamics. For example, in the first year, students grapple with big, multifaceted questions, such as “How can we feed the world?” or “Who should own information?”. The students actively engage with these questions, using the aforementioned habits and concepts, such as searching for the right problem, breaking it down, conducting a gap analysis, understanding constraints and analogies, and applying heuristics. Minerva students also partake in residential rotations to 7 different cities, where they engage with local civic organisations to tackle local issues.

What features does Minerva’s online learning platform have to enhance the overall learning experience of students?

What makes the Minerva education unique is that it combines an intentionally designed curriculum, with a pedagogy fully based on active learning which is then delivered over our platform, called Forum™. This is why we do not license the platform on its own, but rather partner with academic institutions who want to transform their education, through curriculum and pedagogy. The platform enables this, as it was intentionally designed for educational purposes. The interface allows live polling, breakout groups that the professor can listen in to, live collaboration tools, and quick reaction emojis. In addition, the professor has a different interface which allows him/her to see the “talk time” of each student in order to engage those who have been quieter. All these tools provide essential data points and information for continuous evaluation and feedback that the professor can then share with each student.

How does Minerva’s admission process differ to most traditional universities?

In addition to high school grades, Minerva considers each applicant’s accomplishments outside of class, their performance on a series of cognitive challenges, and their conduct during a video interview.

The process was developed with equity in mind, as we believe that talent is equally distributed. The admissions committee does not look at SAT or ACT scores, parents’ earning power or net worth, nor the typical applicant essay because all of these have been shown to bias toward wealthy applicants. Wealthy applicants are able to enlist the cadre of tutoring, test prep, and essay editing service providers that is beyond the reach of their less-privileged peers. High school transcripts, extracurricular accomplishments, and cognitive tests are less biased measures of talent, ambition, and grit, and are far better predictors of future success.

Although we do not have quotas, our student body is very geographically diverse (roughly a quarter each coming from North America, Asia, and Europe, with the remaining quarter coming from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East) and almost equally male and female.
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What evidence exists demonstrating the positive contribution that Minerva has had on its students?

Our first graduating class graduated last May and over 90% were employed or accepted in prestigious Masters programme within 6 months of graduating. Our students are encouraged and assisted in getting internships as of their first year, so when they graduate, most of them have had a few internships. We also work with some employers to incubate innovation labs that would be staffed by a group of our students.

What are the Minerva Schools’ goals for the future?

On the university side, our goals continue to provide the best education experience to our students. With Covid-19, we are fortunate that our academic component does not change and there is no disruption to our students. Obviously our global rotations’ experiential component was moved to a virtual environment and we will continue that until it is safe for our students to resume their in-person global rotations.

​Minerva also partners with academic institutions who are transforming their education, through licensing our pedagogy, curriculum and platform. This often entails co-design and tight collaboration with our partners. We do hope that we will continue partnering with other academic institutions as many seize the opportunity to re-think the experience they are offering their students.

An interview with Conrad Wolfram, physicist, mathematician and technologist, Strategic Director and European CEO/Co-Founder, Wolfram Research.
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Conrad is a leading advocate for a fundamental shift of maths education to become computer-based or alternatively introduce a new core subject of computational thinking. He founded computerbasedmath.org and computationalthinking.org to fundamentally fix maths education for the AI age — rebuilding the curriculum assuming computers exist. The movement is now a worldwide force in re-engineering the STEM curriculum.