Karima Grant  

Digital solutions for children’s learning

Close to 3 million children have had their school year disrupted this year. Digital and mass media reaches not only children, but also their parents with educational content that can support literacy and mathematical outcomes. This is why ImagiNation Afrika decided to produce a 25 minute – 16-episode educational series using local Senegalese content to support children’s learning through a play-based approach.

Karima Grant

Entrepreneur Name: Karima Grant, Ashoka Fellow

Country: Senegal 

Organization: ImagiNation Afrika – Ker Imagination 

Website: imaginationafrika.org

Field of action: Education models and tools for children and youth 

Needs support to achieve greater impact in: Fundraising, Digital Expertise, Marketing and Communications, Advocacy 

The mission of the social enterprise before and after Coronavirus

ImagiNation Afrika is a social enterprise dedicated to building the capacity of the ecosystem around children in West Africa. ImagiNation Afrika works for the development of the entire child by creating public spaces dedicated to the child, collaborating with institutions that nourish child development and accompanying parents and communities, to build an ecosystem that allows African children to thrive and take the lead in the 21st century.

In 2016, Imagination Afrika opened Ker ImagiNation, a children’s learning and innovation hub dedicated to play-based learning for children aged 6 months to 12 years. To date, Ker ImagiNation has welcomed more than 15 000 children and their families and created internationally renowned children’s exhibitions, including exhibitions for the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale.

Ker Imagination received the European Museums Association’s Best Children in Museums Award in 2019.  Ker ImagiNation Playschools – Senegal’s first of high-quality, play-based infant toddler programs and preschool programs – was founded in 2019.

Close to 3 million children have had schools disrupted due to the ongoing pandemic, parents have had to face the responsibility of home schooling their children or taking them through their distance learning programs. They are also worried about the future of their children. There is a need to support children’s socio-emotional/cognitive abilities to develop, despite the pandemic.

ImagiNation Afrika offers a digital approach to learning since going to schools is not possible during the pandemic.  ImagiNation Afrika hasproposed a 25-episode series using local content to support reading and mathematics through a play-based approach. The series focuses on fostering children’s social-emotional well-being, problem-solving skills; mathematical thinking and creative activity all while promoting making COVID safety behaviours, using locally relevant puppets, humour and storytelling.

They are currently finishing the pilot episode in French and are raising funds for dubbing into two of Senegal’s local languages. Each episode comes with an accompanying booklet for teachers and parents which expands on every episode’s thematic and academic content. Thissolution expands on the ImagiNation Afrika play-based approach to early learning and builds upon the current COVID-19 strategy to help children develop essential skills even during the pandemic

ImagiNation Afrika is partnering with relevant local and national government agencies to address the needs of parents in supporting young children’s mental and cognitive health. They have reached over 10 000 parents with the parenting program. They hope to expand their reach to over 300 000 preschool children in Senegal with the pilot and millions more across French-speaking West Africa with the series. ImagiNation Afrika will be measuring the impact on parents and their increased ability to support children’s learning outcomes based on parenting information distributed with the program. They are looking for a 10% increase in the cognitive skills by 5 episodes of regular exposure.

Create the post-COVID world. 

Help Karima and her team develop their solution!

ImagiNation Afrika‘s concrete needs facing Covid-19:

  • Digital expertise: for data collection; specifically, with evaluation of the impact of their programming on preschool children and their parents.
  • Marketing and communications: to raise visibility and support with marketing our programming across a variety of platforms for greater access.
  • Training and personal development: training in advocacy and Coaching (in French) for change management and psycho-emotional impact of COVID.
  • Funding and Financing: to raise 60 000 USD to cover production costs to recover costs and to move content production digitally. The team also would like to be introduced to major donors who can support their content production programming as well as help them evaluate their pilot.
SUPPORT