Hammed Kayode Alabi is a social entrepreneur and founder of the Kayode Alabi Leadership and Career Initiative (KLCI). In this interview with IFEDAYO OGUNYEMI, he spoke on how KLCI will empower 1 million youths across Africa with key 21st-century skills.
WHAT inspired the creation of the edtech platform Skill2Rural.org, and how did the COVID-19 pandemic influence its development?
Two key factors inspired the creation of the Skill2Rural.org web courseware. In 2020, when COVID-19 struck, approximately one billion young people worldwide were out of school, and for those in underserved communities, there were limited resources to continue learning. As an organization, we could no longer run our in-person bootcamp, where these young people had access to 21st-century courses and co-created solutions to the problems they faced within their communities while developing 21st-century skills such as creativity and critical thinking. I also live in the same community as some of these young people, and I remember meeting them on the street, where they had no access to resources to continue learning. So, some of our volunteers and I gathered all the topics we covered at the bootcamp, such as money management, vision boarding, servant leadership, and global citizenship, recorded them using the audio recorder on our phones, and uploaded them to our platform. We then started sharing these recordings with guardians, parents, educators, and teachers to distribute to their children and students. We had over 1,200 downloads, and one of the young people mentioned how it prepared them when they finally got into university. They said, “About the Global Citizenship audio, I learned that I should adapt well to any place I find myself and always make sure I leave the place better than I found it. It also made me start thinking about how I can add value everywhere I go. I will be resuming at the University of Ibadan after the pandemic, and after listening to the audio, I started writing 50 things I will do at the university. I am still at 12.” This experience showed us that when you provide the right information to young people through their digital devices, they can start thinking about how to change their world.
The second reason arose immediately after the pandemic, when we resumed our in-person bootcamp. Two of our main speakers could not reach the community where we were holding the bootcamp because it was very hard to access, and there was a heavy downpour. They had to return home and send a video recording of their sessions instead. This sparked the idea, and with funding from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of Edinburgh Enterprise Grant, we took some of our speakers and mentors to the studio, started creating video content from our curriculum, and began playing it for our young people at our in-person bootcamp. This is how we started using blended learning to scale the bootcamp, enabling any volunteer to take the resources and replicate the bootcamp in their community. These resources, along with feedback and insights from these processes, form the basis of our edtech platform which was funded by the Western Union Foundation Fellowship powered by Watson Institute. It has been a long time in the making, and we have gone through many iterations.
Why are these life and 21st-century skills important for underserved and displaced communities?
A few weeks ago, before the full launch, I logged onto the platform to take one of the courses. I took the vision boarding module and learned so much about creative ways to create my vision, break it down into goals, and build a step-by-step process to achieve what I have set for myself. The ability to create a vision for our lives and work is essential in the 21st century, and the vision boarding module does that perfectly well. Most underserved and displaced young people do not have access to some of these ideas or topics through the formal school system, so our 21st-century-related courses serve as a complementary and alternative opportunity to expose them to new ideas that challenge them. More importantly, learning from people who look like you or share similar circumstances and have achieved remarkable things can be all you need to navigate life and reach the next level. We have other modules on money management, storytelling for change, etc., which are also important in helping young people thrive in the 21st century. While we are developing more modules to continue helping these young people develop the skills needed to thrive, we recognise that skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, collaboration, and negotiation require working with others to develop. This is where our in-person bootcamp comes in, continuing to complement our web courseware.
How does Skill2Rural.org address the challenges faced in delivering in-person bootcamps, and what advantages does the online platform offer to both educators and learners?
Currently, data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shows that there are over 90 million underserved young people in Africa without the necessary skills to thrive in the 21st century. This statistic includes displaced young people, refugees and slum children, etc. How do we change this and reach millions of these young people at scale? Through technology. We cannot reach the number we intend to through our in-person bootcamp alone, but with technology, we can reach communities and countries we might not naturally be able to reach on the continent. It is audacious, but we hope to learn along the way and continually rethink and revisit our model.
Now, addressing the second question about the advantages of the platform for educators and learners. The great thing is that, as an educator, you can reach your students or young people in any community on the continent using the resources and earn a certificate for your contribution. For example, as an educator, you can sign up, tell us the number of students you want to reach, and use the design thinking module to teach your students the art of design thinking. You can get them to take the quizzes together and engage them in practical exercises where they use design thinking to co-create solutions to the problems they face within their communities. As they co-create, they develop collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking skills. You can see how this complements the work of educators without us being physically present. The same applies to the modules on storytelling and vision boarding. For learners, they can take the modules at their own pace, revisit them when they need a refresher, and earn a certificate to showcase their personal and professional development. These modules are designed to spark curiosity and provide tools and ideas to help them thrive in the 21st century. We are still developing ways to engage our users who sign up on the platform and connect them to more personal and professional development opportunities through the partnerships we are building.
What strategies are in place to ensure that the platform effectively reaches and engages young people in remote and underserved communities across Africa?
We are currently using two approaches. One is partnering with local youth organisations across the continent with access to these groups of young people and the infrastructure to support them. We are already building our partnership base and receiving interest. In fact, one organisation plans to take the module with their students and reflect on the topics once they have completed the courses. This approach does not exclude those who might organically find the platform through social media targeting and word of mouth, which is our second strategy. This is also how we reached over 100 users in just one week of launch. The positive experiences people have mean they will likely share them with their friends. For instance, a young migrant I know from Sudan took the courses from the UK and shared their certificates with me. This shows that there is potential not only to reach underserved youths in Africa but also those living in the diaspora. Again, I understand we cannot get everything right from the beginning, but we will keep building brick by brick and learning along the journey. We are also working on a model to deepen our scale, which we will unveil when the time is right.
How do you plan to measure the impact of Skill2Rural.org on the lives and careers of the young people who use it?
While it is too early to discuss the full potential impact, we plan to share quarterly surveys with our users to measure the impact and understand how they are engaging with and using the courses. We also aim to build a community around the modules and organise online networking events that our users can attend. These events will help us gather stories and understand where our users are in their journey. Each module can also be rated on the platform, and users can write reviews, which we will use to develop new modules and improve the platform.
What benefits are there for educators who register on the platform?
I have touched on this already, but in addition to accessing our resources for free, educators can use the resources to create their small projects and take ownership of them. When they use the resources to support their students or young people, the impact also becomes their impact, which they can use to further their personal and professional development. They are also contributing to educational development in their community and earn a certificate for that. By taking the courses in their free time, they are expanding their knowledge in the 21st century.
How does KLCI plan to integrate feedback from users of Skill2Rural.org into the platform to continually improve its offerings?
We are already developing a framework for version two of the platform based on the initial feedback from our soft launch, and we are iterating the platform accordingly. As I mentioned, we will send surveys to our users quarterly, and we will use the feedback to continue improving the user experience on the platform. There is also a “Contact Us” section on our platform, where users can reach out if they face any issues, and our admins can read it on the backend and make necessary adjustments. Feedback is at the center of our design process, and we believe it will help us serve those we intend to serve.
What are the long-term goals for Skill2Rural.org, and how do you envision it contributing to the empowerment of young people across Africa by 2030?
Our current goal is to get these courses into the hands of millions of young people across Africa and reach 1 million by 2030. We plan to build a strong partnership base to achieve this. While I cannot comment on some long-term plans at the moment, we hope to host multiple courses on the platform to further the personal and professional development of young people on the continent. For example, we asked hundreds of young people what courses they would like to see on the platform, and we received about 76 suggestions. We look forward to creating more of those courses and finding ways for some of these courses to be taken offline, so users without a strong internet connection can access them. One of the challenges some of these young people mentioned is how difficult it is to afford at least $30 for these courses, and we provide them for free. Breaking that barrier is something I am proud of. We are also considering deepening our offerings as we build our second version. We are looking into including interactive AI career chatbots to help some of our users think through career options in the 21st century. I have already developed a model for this and tested it without AI, and I am considering the reach and impact it could create if it were AI-powered. We are also exploring AI-assisted learning and using AI to create context- and language-specific content. While not everything is clear at the moment, we are confident we will get there.
How will you balance online learning with in-person bootcamps, and what synergies are you hoping to achieve between these two approaches to training?
I believe they complement each other, although the online platform will help us scale up while the in-person component will help learners deepen their experiences. For example, at our in-person bootcamp, learners have the opportunity to develop ideas and innovative solutions to the problems they face within their communities, connect and build networks with facilitators, volunteers, and peers, and advance their personal development journey. These experiences cannot be fully replicated by taking courses on the platform. However, we believe that those who take the modules online can apply the lessons to real-life issues. For example, those who take the money management modules will be able to manage their money and resources better. Similarly, those who take the servant leadership modules will, we hope, become better leaders who put service at the core of their work. We hope that those who take the storytelling module will become better communicators of their brand, stories, and work. We also hope that those who take the vision boarding module will be able to create a better vision for the kind of world they imagine for themselves. Whether someone attends the in-person bootcamp or accesses the modules online, we hope they will be able to apply the lessons and be prepared for the opportunities of the 21st century. Again, I don’t have all the answers, but we will keep learning along the journey and keep building as we grow and scale.
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