Solution

Read the interview of Aape Pohjavirta, Founder and President of Funzi

What specific education challenge is this solution trying to resolve?

We give people access to the skills they need to succeed in the future, especially those underprivileged and marginalised groups who do not have access to traditional systems.

The solution is unique in its ability to give access to learning to a mobile user. Funzi makes education impactful, accessible and scalable.

Where does this solution fit into a global or local (digital) educational landscape?

The skills gap is expanding globally, and the traditional education system is too slow in its transformation. Funzi is best positioned to close the skills gap because it makes learning available to everyone. Without Funzi the global polarisation will continue to grow.

Funzi is gender neutral and actually lifts the female gender. 72 % of users in our most recent TVET project in South-Africa were female. Mobile learning can be used as a tool to close the gender gap. Women are at the heart of what we do.

The solution is focused on delivering soft skills and 4th Industrial Revolution related skills that are global and thus relevant for everyone regardless of the local context. Funzi's learning impact has been validated across multiple cultural contexts globally.

How does your solution work, especially for new users?

When used within the education system, teachers, the educators, gain access to modern teaching methods, and are allowed to implement new teaching methods and styles, and transform their own pedagogies. Learners gain access to relevant skills through relevant pedagogy and technology, and it opens a global perspective for them. They are given the mindset of becoming members of the global community.

How well-known, popular, or used is the solution in Finland? (To what do you attribute this success?)

We have not developed this service for Finns, but for the majority of the world's population.

This makes our business operations in Finland challenging, when it comes to access to funding, employees, and support—hence, it creates additional challenges for business and corporate development.

How safe is it to use this solution?

Our solution is fully GDPR compliant.

Scalability, Impact and sustainability

Scale is a result of multiple successful implementations in a variety of contexts. How can the solution be scaled up to reach a larger number of learners and schools?

Funzi has been designed and built for scale from the ground up to be hyper scalable: multiple audiences, contents, across a wide variety of devices and use cases.

Funzi’s implementation is a clear process: it starts with the definition of the target audience, content decisions, what language to use, how the audience will be reached. Once this is in place, the implementation can start.

Share an implementation success story/quote to describe your scalability.

In Vietnam the solution was used to train more than 500 000 consumers on food sustainability in less than a year. It is demanding to do this using traditional methods.

Explain your Operational model / Business model

Funzi currently has two business models. One is selling user subscriptions through existing education systems and the other is selling individual courses directly to mobile consumers.

Is it possible for parents, teachers, schools, municipalities, governments, CSR/NGOs/Funds to become users/customers of your solution?

Yes.

What are your pricing plans / funding models like?

The user subscription model we have is based on an annual pricing fee.

Private consumers’ course prices are defined market by market.

How do you measure the impact, or effectiveness, of your solution?

We measure impact via quantitative and qualitative models where course completion, perceived learning, and acquisition of new skills are the main qualitative components. Both models are validated by scientific research. The pedagogical model has been in a peer-reviewed academic paper. In addition, Funzi conducts active user interviews and feedback analysis continuously.

Does the user receive feedback on the impact of the solution after using it? If so, how?

The partners have access to the reports and analytics mentioned previously.

Ecosystem

Who are the necessary people and roles needed to ensure a successful implementation of your solution?

Funzi can act as a standalone service from the mobile internet, or it can act as an active partner in a local ecosystem.

All parents are the same around the world. There are the same archetypes; everyone loves their kids and everyone wants better for their children compared to what they got themselves—the love for children is the same all over the world.

How can local innovators, startups or organisations collaborate with you or the solution?

The Funzi implementation model is built around the concept of building a new global ecosystem. We can support, e.g., private entities, government agencies, NGO's in enhancing their own operations and in scaling up their educational programs.

How do you collaborate with the ministry?

Varies by country to country. We smile and behave.

How can the middleman help you?

When entering any market, we search for an active partner in the local ecosystem, and they become part of our local DNA. We do not represent colonial thinking by which we would know all the answers the best.