LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Shule Direct, developing cutting edge educational programs to empower youth and children
Born and raised in Tanzania, Faraja Nyalandu, founder of Shule Direct, is a resourceful social entrepreneur passionate about developing cutting edge social and educational programs that empower youth and children. What inspires her the most is working collaboratively in social development and educational industry to develop and deliver innovative resources and solutions that prepare children and youth for a sustainable future. With over 15 years’ experience in engaging young people, she has dedicated her professional career and personal life to empowering them to achieve their full potential.
In 2013, Faraja established Shule Direct, a thriving organisation providing comprehensive web and mobile educational platforms offering national curriculum based learning content across multiple subjects to over a million in and out of school youth. The enterprise now hosts Tanzania’s 1st Start up incubator for young women entrepreneurs for their personal and professional development and developing a digital platform for young entrepreneurs to learn, network and grow their businesses.
She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network after serving on the Global Future Council for Education, Gender and Work. Faraja is a Teaching and Learning Thematic Lead for the Regional Educational Learning Initiative (RELI) where she focuses on teachers’ pre and in service professional development. An education enthusiast, she has also served on the Board of Ubongo Learning, READ and a technical adviser for Institutions for Inclusive Development that helped Tanzanian institutions innovate and scale systemic solutions to big development problems.
Last year, the World Economic Forum appointed her as a Young Global Leader Class of 2020, a tenure for 5 years. Prior to that she has been recognized as a Leading Woman in Technology in Africa award for her work with Shule Direct, Tanzania Leadership Awards’ Hall of Fame Woman of the Year Award and a System Innovator award by Segal Family Foundation for systemic change in digital learning in Secondary School education in Tanzania. Africa Youth Awards has named Faraja among 100 Most Influential Young Africans.
An avid reader who has authored two youth empowerment books written in Kiswahili, Tanzania’s national language, to reach underserved young people and catalyse their dreams. Faraja is a qualified Lawyer with an LLB and LLM (Master of Laws) in Human Rights and Migration.
Lioness Weekender spoke to the truly inspirational Faraja Nyalandu to learn more about her unique entrepreneurial journey and to find out about her plans for the future.
What does your company do?
Shule Direct’s goal is to provide local and accessible digital educational content for young learners across Tanzania and Africa to improve their learning outcomes. We are working with qualified teachers to create digitized learning notes, tutorials, quizzes, and multimedia content and developing technological solutions to deliver comprehensive curriculums on web and mobile solutions.
What inspired you to start your company?
I stumbled upon the potential of technology in supporting learning when I was a young mother with two children while studying for my Law degree. I could not be a typical student because of my family responsibilities. E-learning enabled me to connect with my peers, lecturers, and online resources when I could not be physically present at University.
A few years later, now a trained lawyer, Tanzania had the worst Secondary School results in its history. There were a number of challenges leading to the failure but memories of my own experience in accessing learning resources in circumstances where it could have been hard, made me work on the same. To make qualified educational resources accessible to all students regardless of their personal, academic, or social challenges. Mobilizing qualified teachers and leveraging technology to make every student access them.
The inspiration is to address a learning need, supporting people to overcome their challenges and fulfill their potential. I know from my own personal experience, when quality education is accessible, anytime, and anywhere, people are able to realize their dreams.
Why should anyone use your service or product?
Local Content: Shule Direct learning platforms develop and provide local content that is addressing market needs and filling an existing gap in the education sector. We develop learning content in consultation with the users and the stakeholders involved in the ecosystem. This enables us to always be in demand and retaining users as much as gathering new ones.
Contextual user experience: Shule Direct’s interfaces are simple and easy to use. Emphasis is placed on having a user experience that takes into account the digital skills level of the users and provision of content in formats that can support access such as the HTML text based content. We grow with our particular users and their technology advances and not just market technology advances. We engage in user testing, always designing with them and incorporate ongoing feedback. Our agility and commitment to be market responsive makes us very special.
Repository technology: Shule Direct’s educational content repository and its Application Programmer’s Interface (API) enables organization and management of potentially massive amounts of information and resources. Content can be added, amended, and restructured without messing with the user interface (UI). The initial work in the API positions us to be a learning content powerhouse in Africa.
Tell us a little about your team
Our team is made of diverse people from different backgrounds, expertise, and experiences. We work with teachers for content creation and coordination, technical developers for both front end and back end programming, monitoring and evaluation data scientists for research and analysis, finance and administration for fundraising, fund management and Human Resources management and Strategy for advocacy, communications, stakeholders’ management, and strategic alignment.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
My mother was a teacher, and my father was a General in the Military. They were not particularly entrepreneurial even though they had small business ventures.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
Each of Shule Direct learning platforms is designed for scalability and can be replicated easily in other countries with desired content. We have now expanded beyond Secondary School education, entering the Primary School market. We also testing and developing our e-learning platform for Kenya, with plans to also scale into Rwanda by 2022. Our technology can easily be applied to diverse education and learning needs. Entering these other learning levels and markets will position Shule Direct as a premier provider of relevant digital educational content in Africa.
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
To be able to create innovative solutions that support a person to fulfill their learning needs.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Just start. There will never be the right time, the right circumstances, or the right people. You just have to start, keep your eyes on the prize and enjoy the journey taking you there.
To find out more about Faraja’s work and her business, Shule Direct, send an email to: faraja@shuledirect.co.tz or visit the company’s website and social media platforms:
