Youth, Skills, & the Workforce of the Future

Selected

The Rumie Initiative

Making free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide

Team Lead

Kyle Lubieniecki

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Solution Summary

Marginalized children around the world face great obstacles to receiving a quality education. Yet we live in an era where skills and employment resources are more abundant than ever. To fill this gap, The Rumie Initiative collects and curates locally-relevant and context-appropriate job skills content from the internet, and sorts and organizes it on its LearnCloud. Rumie now seeks to expand access to these resources with a new LearnCloud Android app.

In partnership with Roshan Telecom, Rumie is testing the app with Roshan employees in Afghanistan. The pilot project’s objectives are to gain the user feedback needed to enhance the app’s user experience and to better understand Afghanistan’s operational environment. These insights will enable Rumie to increase the LearnCloud app’s accessibility to the larger Afghan market and Roshan’s audience of 6.5 million active subscribers.

Market Opportunity

  • Globally, more than 100 million youth are currently out of primary and lower secondary school.
  • By 2020, smartphones will connect six billion adults on the planet, enabling those once disconnected to access the vast range of learning materials available online.

Highlights

  • Winner of Google.org Impact Challenge, 2017
  • Winner of US Library of Congress Literacy Award, 2016
  • Winner of Ryerson University Social Venture Pitch Competition, 2016
  • Y Combinator Accelerator, 2016
  • Named World’s Best Social Startup, Global Entrepreneurship Week, 2014
  • Recipient of Atlassian Foundation “10 in 10” Partnership Prize
  • Recipient of Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Indo-Pacific Development Prize

Organization Goals

  • Drive youth employment program to increase opportunities and gather data on the effectiveness of educational initiatives

Existing Partnerships

The Rumie Initiative’s current partners include:

  • Google
  • Scotiabank
  • Imagine K12 (Y Combinator)
  • Boston Consulting Group
  • UNICEF
  • Junior Achievement

Partnership Goals

The Rumie Initiative seeks:

  • Innovative foundations and corporations as funding partners
  • Hardware partner to provide or subsidize tablet hardware

Solver Team

Organization Type:
Nonprofit

Headquarters:
Toronto, Canada

Company Stage:
Pilot

Working in:
20 countries

Employees: 
17

Website: 
https://rumie.org/

Solution Team:

  • Tariq Fancy Founder, The Rumie Initiative
  • Kyle Lubieniecki Product Lead, The Rumie Initiative

Learning

Digital Learning for the Underserved

Solver The Rumie Initiative, which makes free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide, received $100,000 in prize funding from Member Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity in 2019 for winning the Digital Divide and Digital Literacy Challenge powered by MIT Solve.

Learning

Digital Learning for the Underserved

Solver The Rumie Initiative received the $25,000 "10 in 10" Partnership Prize from Member Atlassian Foundation in 2017 to make free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide.

Learning

Digital Learning for the Underserved

Solver The Rumie Initiative received the $25,000 Indo-Pacific Development Prize from Member Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2017 to make free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide.

Learning

Digital Learning for the Underserved

Solver The Rumie Initiative received follow-on funding for the Indo-Pacific Development Prize from Member Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2018 to make free digital education accessible to underserved communities worldwide.

 
 
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