Chatterbox wins inaugural ‘Next Billion’ Edtech Prize at GESF 2018
Chatterbox, an online language school powered by refugees, has won the inaugural ‘Next Billion’ Edtech Prize launched by The Varkey Foundation at the Global Education & Skills Forum 2018. The prize recognises the most innovative technology destined to have a radical impact on education in low income and emerging world countries.
Chatterbox was voted for by delegates at The Global Education & Skills Forum from three startup finalists which include Dot learn, and TeachMeNow. All three winners will be awarded $25,000 as well as the unique opportunity to pilot their technology in partner schools in Western Cape, South Africa.
Over 40 startups were selected to pitch for the ‘Next Billion’ Edtech Prize, which focuses on low income and emerging economies. The winners were chosen from six finalists which included Learning Machine, Localized, and The Biz Nation.
Led by TechCrunch Editor-at-Large Mike Butcher, the expert panel of judges was made up of venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, experts in Edtech and learning sciences, and senior education policy makers.
Mike Butcher said: “It was clear to the judges that emerging market Edtech is going to be one of the hottest tech sectors in the world for the next few years. The majority of the startups we saw during the competition clearly have enormous potential. The new wave of Edtech is clearly about to hit its stride. It’s fantastic that GSF is throwing the spotlight on this exciting sector.”
The jury selected the three winners from six finalists who pitched on the main GESF stage on Sunday morning. The audience voted on who should lift the trophy.
About Chatterbox
Chatterbox is an online language school powered by refugees.
This web platform harnesses the wasted talent of unemployed professionals who are refugees, offering them work as on-line and in-person language tutors. Based in the UK, where there is a language skills shortage estimated to cost the economy £48bn every year, Chatterbox counts several UK universities and major non-profits and corporations among its clients. Chatterbox is looking for funding to expand its network to countries with large refugee populations for whom there are few economic opportunities.
Location: United Kingdom
Chatterbox Chief Executive Mursal Hedayat said: “I was three years old when I arrived in the UK as a refugee with my mum Patuni. She was a civil engineer who spoke English and three other languages fluently. After we had to leave Afghanistan because of civil war, I watched her became unemployed in the UK for more than a decade. “Refugees with degrees and valuable skills still face shockingly high levels of underemployment. An idea like Chatterbox has never been more urgently needed.”
About Dot Learn
Dot Learn makes online video e-learning accessible on slow, expensive internet connections for users in low-income countries. Its technology reduces the file-size of learning videos, requiring 1/100th of the bandwidth to watch. At current data prices in Kenya and Nigeria, this means a student or learner can access 5 hrs of online learning for about the cost of sending a single text message ($0.014). It offers content providers the opportunity to reach potentially billions of users for whom online learning would otherwise be impractical or ruinously expensive.
Location: Nigeria
Dot Learn CEO Sam Bhattacharyya said: “The issue isn’t so much the lack of internet but the cost of internet. We are going to make online learning work for the next billion by making it as affordable and accessible as text messaging.”
About TeachMeNow
TeachMeNow is a global marketplace that connects teachers, experts, and mentors to students. The technology combines scheduling, payments and live virtual sessions that can connect on any device. It empowers tens of thousands of teachers to create their own online businesses, with some earning over $100,000 last year. In addition, schools and companies including Microsoft use TeachMeNow software to create their own-branded online learning communities. TeachMeNow also donates the software to SOS Children’s Villages, who are piloting the service in five countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Location: UAE
TeachMeNow Managing Director Thea Myhrvold said: “As a female entrepreneur, I felt it was important to create positive stories for and from the Middle East. That’s why I came back to the UAE to start TeachMeNow. The first class using our technology had a Venezuelan teaching Spanish to a Saudi student. Now, we empower tens of thousands of teachers, teacher entrepreneurs, schools, institutions to reach students all over the world.”
11 of the pitches at Next Billion Edtech Prize
About the Next Billion Edtech Prize
This new prize identifies, spotlights and celebrates the world’s leading edtech startups that have shown through ingenuity and innovation that they can improve learning in parts of the world where there is limited access to good quality teaching.
According to UNESCO, 264 million children do not have access to schooling, while at least 600 million more are “in school but not learning”. These are children who are not achieving even basic skills in maths and reading, which the World Bank calls a “learning crisis”.
Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Next Billion Prize said,
“Over a billion young people – a number growing every day – are being denied what should be the birthright of every single child in the 21st century, no matter where they live: a good education that allows them to make the most of their God-given talents.
“We have launched the ‘Next Billion Prize’ to highlight technology’s potential to tackle the problems that have proven too difficult for successive generations of politicians to solve. Our fervent hope is that the prize inspires practical and persistent entrepreneurs the world over to come forward with fresh tech ideas. These ideas must be hardy enough to improve education in regions where young people are denied access to a good quality teacher and a great learning environment”.
The ‘Next Billion’ Edtech Prize, which comes five years after the Varkey Foundation founded the US $1 million Global Teacher Prize, was awarded for the first time at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) 2018 taking place on the 17-18 March in Dubai. Widely referred to as the “Davos of Education”, the GESF, brings together over 2000 delegates from around the world to solve the big questions in global education.
The prize was the focal point of Tomorrow, a new edtech summit taking place for the first time at the GESF.
This offered Edtech startups:
Ministerial Mentoring – an opportunity for the startups to have sessions with current and former Ministers to hear what they’re looking for from edtech as well as an opportunity for those in positions of power to directly learn how new technologies can make a difference to the classroom.
Invest In Edtech – an opportunity for the startups to meet VCs and investors from Silicon Valley and beyond.
Business Mentoring with Paperclip – session run by Deepak Madnani, founder of Hong Kong’s leading startup incubator. Sessions will focus on business model review; clarifying the value proposition; and customer development within the education sector.
Foundation Consultation – an opportunity to meet some of the world’s leading foundations to discuss how they measure impact and their criteria for awarding funds;
Mentoring in Learning Sciences – an opportunity for the start ups to be mentored by world leading academics from Institute of Education (IoE), MIT and Carnegie Mellon,
UCL Presentation of new edtech research – new research from UCL’s Institute of Education, the world’s leading centre for education research and teaching, on where and how edtech is set to make the biggest global impact.
Sunny Varkey added: “This will be the first ed-tech summit in the world which will join the most important players from the spheres of education and technology together. Startups will have access to every type of stakeholder – from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to former and current education ministers, foundations, academics and the world’s best teachers. They can draw on their expertise and support to build products that will work as well in the classroom as they do in an elevator pitch”.
For further information about the Global Education and Skills Forum please visit: https://educationandskillsforum.org
For further information on the Global Teacher Prize please visit: http://www.globalteacherprize.org
