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onebillion

About the Project

This project is one of the 2021 WISE Awards winners. 

 

Context and Issue 

89% of children in low-income countries cannot read a simple text by age 10. onebillion builds comprehensive solutions to take children from zero to numerate and reading with confidence in their own language, even when there is no additional scaffolding to support the child’s learning – including no internet, no formal schooling, no digitally literate caregivers, and no mains power.

 

Solution and Impact

Our comprehensive numeracy and literacy software, onecourse, adapts to the level of any child, providing personalised learning sessions with no need for login. This is delivered on onetab, a customised and durable low-cost Android tablet which can be solar-charged and is designed for use by multiple children each day, including in chaotic and challenging learning environments such as refugee camps or remote contexts.

We work with partners to iterate evidence-based implementation models for each new context, ensuring children get regular engagement with the solution before scaling. Over 200,000 children globally are using onecourse, which is proven to deliver learning gains in both high- and low-income countries, and to equalise the gender learning gap in early years. onetab is already in use by tens of thousands of children across Malawi, USA, Canada, Uganda, Sierra Leone and beyond. For many of these children, onetab has been a critical education resource during COVID school closures. In Malawi, where 650 families have each been using a onetab since July 2020, we have seen sustained usage of average two hours a day.

 

Future Developments 

Currently, we are working on localising the software into more languages (already in Swahili, Chichewa, English and French) and increasing its accessibility for children who are not yet school-ready. We are also working with partners to further optimise tablet usage within existing projects, and to bring this solution to more countries, including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Lebanon.

May 05, 2021 (last update 03-08-2022)