AppBridge.com: Empower Through Mobile

Mission:

The AppBridge mission is to empower “The Bottom Billion” youth through universally accessible, demand-driven and market-oriented educational mobile applications by synergizing an open source technology platform with a cooperative ecosystem of education and health content providers, academic institutions, developers, telecom operators, sponsors and end-users.

Overview:

Through collaboration and in partnership with others, we are developing an open source, cloud-based digital platform designed to connect talented mobile application developers with formal and informal education and health content providers, and co-create a powerful distribution channel to bridge the digital divide and educate young people in the bottom billion through their cellular phones.  

Each educational app will be submitted to The AppBridge platform, vetted, distributed to partner Telecom Operators and promoted in “The AppBridge Zone”, where it will be available to end-users.  The AppBridge platform will track the download activity and usage of each distributed App, enabling “real time” feedback and allowing for a dynamic, evolving virtual educational experience for users.

With an estimated 3.8 billion mobile subscribers in the developing world, there is enormous opportunity to provide formal and informal educational tools to individuals who do not otherwise have access to basic math, literacy, and health information. The AppBridge is committed to co-creating an important “blueprint” for how digital and information based solutions can be launched in a frictionless way in critical environments. This is a non-profit social enterprise.

History

The AppBridge concept grew out of collaboration between Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, YGL and Professor Umar Saif, his students and YGL Margo Drakos in the fall of 2010.  Umar and Margo oversaw the development of two interactive Mathematics SMS App Games by two teams of engineering students at LUMS. The games emulate the experience of a student sitting through a math quiz in a classroom and enable a group of people to compete with each other using their cell phones. We asked the LUMS students to document their app development and testing on their own blogs:

http://EducationBySMS.blogspot.com/
http://SMStoLearn.blogspot.com/

After the Apps were developed, Margo found the challenge was promoting and distributing the Apps to the target end-users. While in Davos this January at the annual World Economic Forum Summit, Margo discussed the concept in a number of meetings with academic institutions, corporate leaders, education content providers and telecom partners.  She discovered there was overwhelming commitment to create, sponsor, and distribute educational Apps for young adults with limited access to education and a number of fellow Young Global Leaders who shared her passion.  The AppBridge was conceived.

Next Steps

• We are currently establishing a 501(c)(3).
• We are working to develop the open source, cloud based platform to receive and distribute the mobile apps.
• In the next year, our objective is to launch two pilot programs in India and the Middle East focusing on English Language Training. Each pilot program will include the following work-flow and testing:
• Create our first cooperative ecosystem of education and health content providers, academic institutions, developers, telecom operators, sponsors and end-users.
• Build the open source cloud-based platform.
• Enable student developers to “adopt-an-app” through the platform and go through the content request process with our educational content providers to build an effective app for the target population in India.
• Receive the apps, test the apps and distribute to the appropriate App Stores.
• Work with our partners in India to effectively promote the “AppBridge Zone” Apps to the target end-users.
• Track the download activity and usage of each distributed App to our ecosystem.
• Engage with and garner feedback from our ecosystem.
• Refine our ecosystem accordingly and scale our platform to other regions.

Partnerships:
We are a 2011 Member of the Clinton Global Initiative

We are currently working with the following Partners:

• Accel Partners
• InfoSys
• Lahore University of Management and Sciences
• McGraw-Hill
• Mobile Movements
• MorphLabs
• Openwave
• SwitchCase Group
• World Economic Forum and Forum of Young Global Leader

The Youth Effect

Finding

This task force ensures that younger people (under 25) are engaged with the World Economic Forum in shaping the future in a participatory process that will diversify inputs and ideas generated across civil society while cultivating intergenerational leadership.

YGL Response

The Youth Effect turned into a book for decision makers.

Key 2010 Accomplishments

Our timeline had been focused and detailed over 2010 and we successfully met our milestones with the pre-launch in Dubai at the Summit on the Global Agenda.

Next Milestones

1. Media Push. Organize a global media push through WEF/YGL platform. For example, for the broader Americas I had envisioned organizing a series of interviews with the authors that could be disseminated in different media platforms. We could organize one for Europe and Asia as well. The good news is that the toolkit has authors from every region and thus can be used as a foundation for this media campaign.

2. YGL/Regional WEF Meetings. David sent today the various events we will have as a community in 2011 which is quite exciting in terms of reach. We could have a session at each of the YGL forums to discuss the ideas/suggestions generated around the main discussion points presented in the toolkit

3. Disseminate Solutions. As we discuss during the year the different topics, we would like to populate the website with the different conclusions/ideas/initiatives so its a live project that continues to evolve and does not end with the effort done this year.

Leadership

Jennifer Corriero, Irene Tinagli, David Jones, Penny Low, Honorable Scott Brison, Juan Mario Laserna, HRH Crown Prince Haakon, Wilmot Allen, Alfredo Capote, Josh Spear, Lucian Tarnowski, Adrian Cheok, Bhavneet Singh, Jennifer Corriero, Yair Goldfinger, Teresa Kennedy,

Lorna Solis, Kingsley Bangwell, Carolina Müller-Möhl, Ángel Cabrera, Javier Garcia, Alberto Vollmer, Nancy Lublin

More Information:

Youth Effect Website

Finding

Financial education is critical to understanding how today’s society operates. However, it is currently not part of standard school curricula.

YGL Response

“LEARN MONEY” is part of the Global Redesign Initiative established in 2009. The initiative addresses the need for current and future generations to have access to effective financial literacy programs.

The goal of the initiative “LEARN MONEY” is to improve the financial literacy of young adults in German-speaking Europe on a sustainable basis by following a “top down/bottom-up” approach. This means on one hand applying public pressure by increasing awareness of the lack of financial literacy and its consequences to the wider public through media campaigns and through the involvement of opinion leaders (politics’/business/academia/unions) who voice clear demands (such as to include economics in the standard curriculum).
On the other hand the initiative wants to have direct impact on the financial education on (some) children and young adults by launching innovative educational projects and the qualification and support of selected existing initiatives and effectively franchising existing “best practice” financial literacy programs/projects and tools into German-speaking Europe. A roll-out of the successful prototype into other regions globally and/or target groups is envisioned.
Furthermore, the initiative “LEARN MONEY” will establish a sustainable “Learn Money” network with a yearly forum/summit.

Key 2010 Accomplishments

The “LEARN MONEY” Initiative was first presented at the World Economic Forum in Dalian in 2009. “LEARN MONEY” has been called into action in November 2009 with its first official event, a round table high-level discussion in Berlin, with leaders from education, financial institutions and politics participating on the subject of financial literacy. At the same time, “LEARN MONEY” hit the road with a special supplement of the German newspaper DIE WELT, with a circulation of 700,000 copies across Europe, urging and calling for financial literacy.

“LEARN MONEY”, with its global messages has already won over well-known names, such as Nobel peace price winner and banker Professor Mohammad Yunus. Professor Yunus will highlight the major aspects of financial and consumer literacy, raising awareness about the spending habits of the youth of today at the open forum of the WEF in Davos 2010 in a very special school lesson for local school children on social business. A cooperation with ebs (European Business School) has been established.

Next Milestones

A “LEARN MONEY” conference with speakers from education, business and politics expert on the subject of financial literacy will be held in Zurich in Q3/2010.

Leaders

Carola Ferstl, Carolina Müller-Möhl, Henrik Naujoks, Mirjam Staub-Bisang, Peter Würtenberger

More Information: