Parentsy supports parents who are now forced to home-school because of COVID-19 shutdowns by helping them adapt and cope with the brand-new concept of schooling at home. While there are resources available for curriculum based topics - there are hardly any resources available in Ethiopia or or elsewhere to help parents with the HOW of home-schooling rather than the "what" of homeschooling.
Parentsy is a learning program that reaches parents and caregivers over WhatsApp or Telegram. Using a highly-effective microlearning format, we provide daily bite-sized, short-form learning content based on our early-grade curriculum. The content includes flashcards, audio notes and animated videos.
These short modules are designed to be bandwidth friendly and cost-effective and are built for conditions with low or intermittent internet access. Along with subject matter content,
parents and caregivers readout learning materials and play engaging audio, video content to their learners in a collaborative learning environment and thus boosting learning and skill outcomes. This mixed-media approach also enables caregivers to reach a diverse set of learners including learners with special needs using various teaching styles and various modes of engagement. Modules include key elements of child psychology, learner motivation and designing effective at-home learning environments.
The solution has been launched as a pilot in Ethiopia during the heights of COVID-19 lockdowns and immediately resonated with parents and caregivers across the country. The solution proved so popular that we were supporting at-home learning of over 300 learners in just 48 hours since launch. In the initial pilot phase, we have already reached over 1,000 learners organically and now we are ready to scale. IDEO selected Parentsy as one of the best global learning solutions for the learning crisis unleashed by COVID-19. Parentsy also was recognized in local and international media outlets for its impact and popularity including by Journalists from The Economist and CNN and CNN. We have received multiple inbound requests to launch in international markets in India, SA, UK and Europe.
They can contact our team to access our open-source framework on localizing Parentsy to a new context. This framework includes our learnings on parent motivation, microlearning instructional design, feedback from hundreds of parent conversations and strategies to build learning communities.
We are exploring a collaboration with www.nhh.no and others to build more robust dissemination systems.
