Orenda, a company that aims to provide education to children all over Pakistan, has now launched its Taleemabad Learning App on KaiOS.

First developed in February 2017 for Android devices, the Taleemabad Learning App features animated content, assessments and games that cover the Pakistani National Curriculum for Grades Nursery until Grade 6.  A huge problem in Pakistani children is the issue of learning poverty, where children who are enrolled in schools aren’t learning at their level. The Taleemabad Learning App through adaptive learning gauges the current performance level and then adjusts the student accordingly. 

All these exciting features are now available for KaiOS where they can be accessed by an even greater audience.

The goal

Girls in rural areas and children from the lowest-income households have been most likely to go without education in Pakistan. Large numbers of schools have been regularly closed because of either COVID or poor teaching facilities with high rates of teacher absenteeism. To tackle this range of barriers affecting children’s access to education, Taleemabad and KaiOS have partnered together to bring forth an affordable solution for the individuals in the marginalized under-resourced communities all over the nation.

The partnership has allowed students from underprivileged communities with no or limited access to education to engage in smaller chunks of learning and tackle the basics of numeracy and literacy before committing to more advanced learning. 

The technology

Taleembad’s pioneering work is to ensure that everyone – regardless of whether you’re near or far from any major city – can access learning opportunities when it matters most: from early childhood to fifth grade.

With this in mind, Taleemabad is leveraging emerging technologies to effectively adapt users’ preferences to increase their access to education and extend its reach beyond classroom walls.  It has empowered online learning all over Pakistan and provided students with the freedom to learn from the comforts of their homes. 

The app’s user-friendly experience has helped students in the transition and enter an unfamiliar online learning educational environment – new to many all over the country.

Why KaiOS?

In Pakistan, the smartphone penetration rate was forecasted at 51% for 2020, five times higher than in 2014 – an assumption based on the consistent decline in mobile device prices and increasing shipment numbers of smartphones across developing countries like Pakistan. Nevertheless, smartphone penetration is still low in many small cities and villages in the country. 

Designed to run on low-spec hardware, KaiOS is a light operating system leveraging open, web-based technologies such as HTML5 to create a rich, intuitive user experience and enable access to essential apps and other internet-based resources. These highly affordable KaiOS-enabled devices are being used by a considerable portion of the population in Pakistan. They have also become quite popular in many places with little to no smartphone access.

Available for download in the KaiStore, the Taleemabad app will provide access to meaningful education all over the nation. Orenda Project aims to be scaled up by developing it into a KaiOS-compatible program while offering more diverse educational opportunities for those living outside major cities.

Sharing a similar, purposeful mission to use technology to close the digital divide, Orenda and KaiOS continue to work closely together to bridge the educational gap by creating access to free, engaging, high-quality digital content to the masses of many deserving children.

Acknowledgment

GSMA Innovation Fund is currently funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and supported by GSMA and its members.