40K Foundation
Delivering world-class education to remote villages without internet or qualified teachers.
40K began as a school for children in Bangalore. Today, The 40K Foundation is a social business collective that incubates social enterprises and delivers world-class education to villages with no internet and no qualified teachers using it’s core innovations: the gamified 40K PLUS app that aggregates world class content, and DynamicAssist, which enables children to teach children.
2015 Pitch
Funds raised: $50,100
The $50,100 raised at the March 2015 Funding Network event allowed 40K to develop the educational app and realise it’s technical functionality in numerous 40K PLUS Pods in rural India.
The impact...
Clary Castrission built a school in a village outside Bangalore, India, in 2010, and found himself feeling defeated; that he could not provide the same service to children in the next village, or the one after that. With 350 kids enrolled, he wanted to reach the other 110 million children that needed access to quality education in India. So, Clary and his colleagues came up with 40K PLUS, a project which rents out spaces, or Pods, in villages across India, and provides literacy and numeracy lessons to kids who live there. They do this via the 40K PLUS app, which allows children to work at their own pace, with other children, and without a teacher if necessary. It’s philosophy to “levelise and gameify” education means kids can be engaged in learning wherever they are.
Since the funding was received, 540 children have used the technology platform in a range of villages in India. Their families and communities have also gained exposure to the technology, with 40K estimating that up to 1000 other people are learning indirectly from the program. Comparative baseline results, measuring learning through PLUS over the 10-month Indian school year (June - March), will be available shortly - with community and stakeholder responses received to date exceeding all expectations.
When Clary pitched to The Funding Network, he told us the story of 8-year-old Sahana, who was desperately failing maths at her government school outside Bangalore simply because she hadn’t been taught how to count properly. Now, like hundreds of other kids, she is enrolled in 40K and counting every day with her schoolmates.
Read their Impact Report
Learn more about 40K Foundation.
Supporting Sustainable Development Goals:
