OLPCorps University of Illinois and EWOB, Kenya
Contents
Entrepreneurs without Borders- Illinois Chapter
Entrepreneurs Without Borders™ (EWOB) is an student-lead organization that allows for entrepreneurial-minded collegiate students to design and implement sustainable, project based solutions to issues faced by people in developing and subsistence economies around the world. EWOB was founded by students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has grown to include a more impactful purpose and several development projects in Croatia and Peru, and is currently developing projects in Liberia and India, all within a year of its establishment. EWOB is headquartered within the College of Business at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is expanding chapters at universities nationally and internationally. For more information, check out the www.entrepreneurswoborders.com
Members
| Name | Major | Class | Traveling? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fraser Kinnear | Accountancy and Finance | '09 | Yes | f.kinnear@gmail.com |
| Eric Pierce | Economics and Computer Science | '10 | Yes | epierce2@uiuc.edu |
| Birju Kadakia | General Engineering and Finance | '10 | No | bkadaki2@illinois.edu |
Project Proposal
Challenges-Solution Focus
The Digital Divide Efforts to close the Digital Divide by presenting developing nations with extremely low-cost computers will not, as it is currently applied, be successful. This is largely due to the nature of the digital divide, rather than being an issue of lack of technology in regions, the divide is merely a side effect of the much greater and more pressing income divide.
Westernization and Cultural Sensitivity Another primary issue is rooted in the education provided to support these technologies and the training necessary for the teachers. The children using them have little to no concept of how they work, what they represent, or what they have the potential to mean. The groups organizing these technological outreach programs may have difficulty stepping outside of the westernized mindset and put themselves in the shoes of the children these computers are being designed for. This becomes a larger issue when the country being provided the technology feels that it is a threat to their culture or practices. Although this may seem like an easy failure to correct, the longer it is allowed to exist the more severe of a problem it can become.
Efficiency as a long term learning tool It will be very important to be mindful of the amount of emphasis on technology as a solution to poverty and as an effective teaching tool. Using the internet to teach a basic understanding of concepts can be a very effective tool, but when one attempts to use technology to become an expert in a field without the presence of a seasoned user or expert to guide that interest many additional barriers are put up to slow learning.
Project Proposals Introduction
Introduction: A Need for Adaptability
With limited experience with Kenyan culture and needs, Entrepreneurs Without Borders (EWOB) is cognizant of our limitations to design projects that we can successfully implement in Kenya. We hope to overcome that limitation by hedging our bets with portfolio prospective projects to attempt, as well as look for new initiatives and ways to adapt the old ones. This proposal will describe our thought process behind how we designed our primary project, and loosely describe how we plan to implement that project. We will also detail a secondary, tentative project, as well as describe how we hope to bring many future initiatives through the infrastructure EWOB has already established.
Goals: Sustainability Focus
While we are confident that we can ensure the laptop program’s success during out stay, we will need to work hard to design a system to guarantee that children at the Kavonge Primary School will continue to receive and keep the XO laptops. In order to achieve these goals, we hope to (1) develop control systems that ensure that the children are productively using the laptops, and (2) that either EWOB or the school itself can financially support the laptops indefinitely.
Goal (1): Proper use of laptops
The XO laptop is a very valuable piece of machinery. In any community, there is a threat that it will be misused or stolen. We must ensure that, beyond the extent of our trip, the laptop is used solely by the children, and for the right purposes.
In order to ensure their continued use, EWOB plans to implement a few different control systems. Firstly, we will depend greatly on our relationships with trusted authorities in Tulia. Namely, the teachers and our sponsor who wrote a letter of support will be a primary authority. Secondly, the Kenya Tweets will also serve as our eyes and ears, which we will describe in more detail below (See: Project Idea 1: Kenya Tweets). Thirdly, EWOB’s continued presence in Tulia through annual/semiannual trips will act both as a third control system, as well as promote growth through future projects.
Goal (2): Financial sustainability
The teachers, students, and OLPC program at Kavonge Primary School will need a consistent revenue stream for support. EWOB imagines that financing can come both from grants that we apply for to maintain the project, as well as revenue which the program creates on its own, creating some level of financial independence from grants.
Firstly, EWOB hopes to maintain interest in this Kenya initiative by turning it into a permanent program at the university. Having been rolled into the University of Illinois’ College of Business, and with a large and growing membership of students from all over the University of Illinois, EWOB can ensure the sustainability of interest in Kenya Tweets by planning future trips every year to Kavonge Primary School, brining more laptops and solutions to problems recognized by previous trips that we design while at school. We also hope to collaborate closely with Caring For Kenya, a local NGO in Urbana, Illinois, which brings money and solutions to the town of Tulia where Kavonge Primary School is located.
Secondly, we hope to design a revenue-generating collaboration between EWOB and Kavonge Primary School, which will add some level of independence from grants. This independence is valuable for imbibing Kenyans with a sense of pride through empowerment, which we believe is an imperative in ensuring overall economic development.
In designing such economic sustainability, we must be certain that we are not promoting any unethical practices. EWOB wants to ensure that any solution does not offer an incentive to parents to revoke the laptops from their children, and use it as a revenue generator, as this will defeat the noble purpose of bringing these laptops to educate children. The XO laptop is a gift to 100 very lucky 6-12 year old students, we hope to foster a feeling of ownership. We also don’t want to design a program that would inadvertently endorse child-labor, so must be sure that any work done with the aid of the XO laptops is as close to the original education-focused goals of OLPC as possible.
We currently have two project ideas to implement in addition to the original goals of introducing the OLPC laptop to Kavonge Primary School’s curriculum. We describe both in detail below. In addition to XO laptop-focused projects, EWOB hopes to identify future projects that we can implement on later trips to improve the standard of living in Tulia altogether.
Project Proposals
Project Idea 1: Kenya Tweets
Mission To connect donors from around the world who are interested to in supporting promising education projects with Kenyan students who have OLPC laptops with whom they have established tangible relationships.
Primary Constraints While it is simple enough to set up a website that connects school children with donors, there are a few inherent problems: 1. Buy-in: How do we reach a wide enough audience of potential donors, and then how do we convince them to continue supporting the students? 2. Empowerment: How can we ensure that this revenue stream is something the Africans can be proud of, invested in, and feel like they are contributing to? 3. OLPC standards: How can we ensure that this revenue-generating system does not interfere with the educational goals of the OLPC program? 4. Child labor concerns: How can we ensure that whatever revenue-generating systems that involve 6-12 year old children and the OLPC laptop don’t threaten the opportunity to extort into child labor?
Solution The Kenya Tweets proposal can be broken into two separate but inter-related initiatives: marketing/awareness and donor website. Both will be collaborations between Entrepreneurs Without Borders in the United States, Caring For Kenya in the United States, and the Kenyan town in Africa.
Marketing/Awareness From my experience growing up, I can remember that one of the things I treasured most about the internet was the social network that flourished. In recent years, much of the developed, and developing, world has found the same value in blogging and in social networks like Facebook or Orkut. Based on their fundamental desire to share and communicate, we believe Kenyan schoolchildren with XO laptops will take famously to Twitter, which will serve as a non-synchronous means to share their lives, thoughts, jokes, and photos with one another. In doing so, they create value that other people around the world can appreciate, not unlike art. Further, other people can interact with the students in a way that was previously ineffective and felt forced. With the appropriate control systems in place, we hope to connect these students with the rest of the microcosm of twitter users, many of whom we believe would love to interact and learn about the lives of Kenyan students on a day-to-day basis.
Choosing to use Twitter is an important distinction – we want to invest our efforts into an idea which we think 6-12 year olds would take to. Children are most productive when they are having fun, and we believe Twitter is a great way for these children to have fun without realizing that they are in fact working. Beyond Twitter, we hope to make public a wide variety of other initiatives and content that the XO laptop owners create – namely, school projects and blogs. We hope to discover the most effective medium during our stay this summer, as we develop stronger relationships with the students and understand their culture better.
Using an idea made famous by marketing guru Seth Godin, we hope to lever the concept of “permission marketing” to then use those established relationships to create potential donors that will support Kenyan school children. Rather than follow the traditional, inefficient marketing strategies of broadcasting the need for donations, we will market directly to people whom we believe already have an interest in these students, because they follow them on Twitter, or comment on their blogs. We believe that this audience will be significantly more interested in donating, because they will have a far stronger sense of connection with the target of their donations.
Donor Website We will market to the Twitter followers a website that they can visit to learn about the students, teachers, and general education program at our school in Kenya, and chose to make donations to improve them. Depending on what we find to be the most effective measure, donors can either donate to entire classrooms or individual students, or pay for specific objects/services that schools need to improve each student’s education. The website will also track the success of the students through their test scores, graduation rates, and other metrics, so donors can see the success that their donations are making.
Because this website will be revenue-generating, we hope to turn it into a bona-fide not-for-profit business by the end of 2009, and establish equal ownership between Entrepreneurs Without Borders and the school board of Kavonge Primary School. This will ensure the future viability of the website, as well as cement a permanent relationship between the University of Illinois and Tulia. A collaboration of EWOB and (NAME OF SPONSOR/NAME OF ALL PARTIES INVOLVED) will write the business plan during our stay this summer. We also hope that Kenyans can, at least in part, maintain the website. This would thus serve as a wonderful platform to educate citizens of Tulia in computers, programming, marketing and general business practice, as well as offer some employment for a few.
Twitter will also serve as a valuable control system for the OLPC program, and can hedge against some common issues that we have recognized plague similar donation businesses. One such problem is that donors remain skeptical over where their money is actually spent. They are looking for assurance and accountability. Unforeseen circumstances could arise, such as a student needing to leave school in order to work for their family. Fortunately, through Twitter or similar mediums, students will most likely tweet or blog about this change in their life, and even perhaps be able to communicate. Twitter can also offer proof of the success of a donation, as students can photograph the books or other donations. Finally, Twitter, if continually used, will be evidence that the students still own and are still using the laptops.
Project Idea 2: Translation
Entrepreneurs Without Borders credits one of our heroes, Nathan Eagle, with coming up with a wonderful idea for bringing potential for income to countless Africans through an organization he founded called txteagle (see: http://txteagle.com/), which assigns simple tasks that can be performed through mobile phones for money. Some of that work, and more complicated tasks that require a larger screen and more developed interface, can be managed through the XO laptops, or through other laptops that benefit from the internet infrastructure established by the OLPC program.
As mentioned in Project Idea 1, we are cognizant of the fact that such work can both take away from the work which OLPC hopes, as well as threatens to promote child-labor, which is something we hope to avoid. Therefore, this idea is only tentative, and we hope to develop it further through conversation with the appropriate parties in Tulia, as well as perhaps Nathan Eagle, who could offer us advice on the best use of this idea. We are further interested in working with Nathan in any areas where appropriate synergies can be found.
Project Idea 3: Future EWOB/Caring for Kenya Projects
As described above, Entrepreneurs Without Borders hopes to return to Tulia, where we can introduce and work on new projects that we identify in our original trip.
Partnering Organizations
Caring For Kenya
Caring For Kenya is our initial contact with our hosts in Kenya. Based out of Urbana, IL, Caring For Kenya has been traveling to Kenya for the past few years, having successfully completed five trips where they have introduced multiple wells, school and church buildings, and a mobile medical clinic.
Kavonge Primary School
Kavonge Primary School has been educating Kenyan students for at least the past 10 years. The school holds around 350 students, and is organized into two classes for each grade. They are the school we will be working at, and are very excited to receive our laptops and instruction, as well as work with us on future initiatives.
Past EWOB Projects
Croatia 2009
Mission EWOB’s mission for our second trip to Croatia was twofold: education and sustainability. Through practice and application of consulting concepts facilitated by UIUC’s EWOB chapter, the students of the JJ Strossmayer University of Osijek experienced first-hand how to approach, evaluate and provide viable business solutions to small business owners. The newly founded EWOB Osijek chapter creates sustainability of these projects by continually working with the small business owners ensuring implementation of the solution provided.
Preparation The UIUC EWOB chapter took on several Educational Initiatives in preparation for the Croatia trip. A team of members developed workshops on the consulting process, setting scope and framing a consulting engagement, reading financial statements, using strategic frameworks, and making presentations to clients. Our member then facilitated these workshops to teach the Croatian students before beginning the engagements.
International Experience While in Croatia the UIUC EWOB chapter attended a series of seminars at the JJ Strossmayer University of Osijek Faculty of Economics. The topics of these workshops ranged from the Croatian economy to basic Baltic language skills and discussions with university students on differences between the educational systems in Croatia and the United States. Our group also visited the Center for Entrepreneurship in downtown Osijek which partners with university, its Graduate Programme in Entrepreneurship, and the Business Incubator BIOS Osijek. There, our members learned of the importance of entrepreneurship in Croatia and the recent trends of its economy.
Projects The 17 American members of EWOB teamed with 30 Croatian EWOB members to perform consulting for 8 different local businesses in Osijek, Croatia. These cross-national teams identified issues the organizations were facing, scoped out project-based solutions, and performed the appropriate research in order to present implementable solutions for their clients. Engagements varied between 2 to 4 weeks in length, and teams consulted for organizations varying from local not-for-profits to farmers' co-ops to high-tech manufacturing and retail. Issues varied from financial analysis to marketing advisory to bankruptcy options.
On top of garnering real work experience, EWOB members also learned how to work on teams with people who speak a different language and come from a different culture under high-pressure situations where they had to deliver a quality service.
A similar trip is scheduled for January of 2010, where similar consulting work will be done, on a larger scale.
Peru 2009
This past winter break, we sent a group of 12 students to Peru for a fact finding mission to determine the economic status and potential for future EWOB projects. Our trip began in Lima, where we students met up with Professor Rosa Maria of Universidad Pacifico, who showed the students around Lima, and gave her opinion on the economic issues Peru faces.
We then spent a few days with 15 Peruvian students from Universidad Pacifico, getting a feel for Peruvian culture, and learning about the challenges they face. We spent a day working with these students and discussing the potential for a future EWOB project over the coming winter break. We then visited the national bank, Banco Central Reservada de Peru, where Mr. Albetro, senior economist, gave a presentation to us about the economic position of Peru and the potential for growth.
We then traveled to Casa Blanca, a small village in the mountains outside of Ica, where we met with Engineers Without Borders from University of Miami Ohio. The local villagers of Casa Blanca took us into their homes, and together with Engineers Without Borders, we worked to improve their local infrastructure, and discussed with village leaders the potential for future projects. Some potential projects include expanding the local Savings and Loan to include micro-financing, establishing a marketplace to lower the prices of goods heading to the mountains, and bringing seed capital to establish guinea pig farming.
We are currently researching the feasibility of these and other economic projects to improve the condition of living in Casa Blanca through sustainable economic growth. We intend on returning to Peru with a similarly-sized team this coming winter break.
