Taddy Blecher

Ensuring access to education for all

With schools shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students all over the world have not been able to attend classes. Which is why The Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII) is working to ensure that students in South Africa aren’t further affected by the loss of curriculum time due to the schools-shutdown.

Taddy Blecher

Entrepreneur Name: Taddy Blecher, Ashoka Fellow 

Organization:  Maharishi Invincibility Institute 

Country: South Africa 

Website: www.ecubed-dbe.org 

Field of action: Education and new ways of learning

Needs support to achieve greater impact in: Fundraising, Technical Digital Expertise, Legal Expertise 

The mission of the social enterprise before and after Coronavirus

The Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII) ensures that students take active responsibility in unlocking their full potential, enabling students to focus on their holistic development, in addition to their professional training.

The schools-shutdown caused loss in curriculum coverage time. This led to an urgent need in a ‘trimmed’ curriculum as a way to help learners catch up with their classes. With some students proceeding to study online, there was a need for learning portals that connect the students with their teachers.

The Department of Basic Education has had no way to assess the levels of COVID in every school, and hence to know where the critical hotspots are in the country. This lack of proactive knowledge has led to schools being opened and closed on several occasions which has cost the Department a fortune financially (the costs of de-fogging schools and getting schools ready of re-opening), and tremendous pressure from the teacher unions to keep all schools closed. This has meant that thousands of schools with no corona have been closed along with those where there have been issues.

MMI have been asked by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) officials to help students catch up with their curriculum by providing urgent ‘trimmed’ Covid-19 curriculum writing services that are focused on responsive projects for all grades. These projects incorporate messaging around empathy, learning about how to combat the virus in a collaborative effort, teamwork and social entrepreneurship, showcasing how everyone can be a changemaker.

MMI is also working to connect educators with their students by working with DBE and Praekelt foundation to develop an interactive South African National Covid-19 Health and Education Hotline, WhatsApp national line, Call Centre, Messaging Service and LMS learning portal that connects students, teachers and parents on their phones via interactive WhatsApp for Business line, with up to 10-million individual messages per day, as well as a National Learner Management System for DBE educational content. This provides an incredible communication platform for the DBE, an instant research platform nationally, as well as a content distribution system that can help millions of parents and learners over time.

Furthermore, The Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII), South Africa’s first holistic Consciousness-Based University, has made 20 of their courses online based courses. In doing so, they have offered 30gb of data to every student, fully funded. This is to ensure that classes are not disturbed so that the academic year can end on time with all students on board. MII is working to provide safe learning opportunities for all Africans by creating the first free Pan African online university, college and high school. They currently have 800 MII students in South Africa progressing with their studies online.

There are up to 450 000 teachers (and 24 000 Principals) in South Africa who will benefit from the Covid-daily health check, and new health inventory resources and AI-based health support tools to be developed by MMI. Furthermore, over 12-million learners will also potentially benefit from a health point of view over time.  There are up to 9 million learners in South Africa with limited access to online resources who will benefit from an educational point of view during and after the Covid-19 school disruptions and recovery. The MII online university hopes to attract 10 000 students across South Africa and Africa over the first 3 years.

Create the post-COVID world. 

Help Taddy and his team develop their solution!

MMI’s concrete needs facing Covid-19:

  • Digital Expertise: for the software and website development of the online university platform. The team has got access to the skills we need, but funding will greatly assist in paying such individuals.
  • Legal Expertise: Local pro-bono legal advice would be appreciated by the team.
  • Funding and Financing: to close a budget shortfall of 856 000 USD and building up its online capabilities and courses.
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