Project DEFY

Project DEFY started in March 2014 when Abhijit Sinha, at that time staying in a small village called Banjarapallaya next to Bangalore, realized 2 things:

• 95% of its inhabitants had never used a laptop nor a smartphone,

• And those same inhabitants could easily and quickly learn by themselves.

At that time, Abhijit experimented the self-learning lab. He let open to anyone the house he was staying in with basic tools (hammers, screwdrivers, …), junks from trashes and 5 laptops with free internet access. 1,5 years later, 45 people were regularly coming to the space making and learning things on their own. The space seemed to run by itself. Project DEFY and its Nooks, small self-learning schools, were born.

Today, 4 Nooks opened: 2 in the outskirts of Bangalore, 1 in Kochi and 1 in Uganda, this latter in partnership with Social Innovation Academy and Nakivart.

According to Megha and Abhijit, the current education system targets a small amount of the Indian population. And even that doesn’t work so well. Project Defy aims to democratize education and customize it according to each community’s needs thanks to Nooks, self-learning spaces, which are “accessible, equitable and localized”.

Those Nooks rely on 2 basic tenets: “learning happens naturally” and “information is available freely”. Nooks provide the framework and the communities create their own learning paths.

A Nook is an age, learning and qualification agnostic space. By mixing the different communities of a single village, Project DEFY wants to “develop the social behavior”.

Today, between 25 and 50 people from 7 to 55 years old come daily in the space: 50% from 15 to 21 years old, 30% from 11 to 14 and 20% of other age range.

In this Nook, the team tries to focus on women who are highly marginalized. They currently represent 60% of the members thanks to Deepika, the outreach manager, who reassure them. Moreover, most of the users have an average income of 100€ per month per household.

The Nook hasn’t fixed time to bring flexibility to the community.

Word-of-month is very strong to make people come in the space. That’s also part of Deepika’s job: she meets communities, families with flyers to talk about the Nook.

The purpose of their coming in the Nook is very diverse. Some may look for wifi access and computer classes, others for an after-class community space, or just a place to learn, make,…

Many women come to the Nook to become more independent and launch their own local business.

During the first 8 months, Project DEFY literally started with nothing: a free space, few materials and laptops donated by an organization and scraps.

As Project Defy started organically, the team decided their model couldn’t be expensive. The operational costs of a Nook shouldn’t exceed 500$ per month: 12,5% for the Internet, 12,5% for the space rent, 12,5% for utilities, 12,5% for materials and 50% for wages.

Project DEFY’s legal structure was created last year as a non-profit organization based on a franchise model. If someone wants to run a “Nook” as a brand, he’ll be helped during the first 8 months by the team (1 month on the ground, 7 virtually) and then he’ll have to pay management fees and report remotely.

In 2016, project DEFY received 15 000$: 50% from crowdfunding, 50% from institutions. In 2017, 140 000$ will be needed to expand as many new actions are planned this year:

10 new Nooks
Fundraising event from July to kickstart “Defy talks” (regular events promoting the self-learning concept)
“The waking dream fellowship” in September
Creation of the “Spring board”, a 1-month long program for self-learning educators
A self-assessment platform tool is under development to generate further revenues thanks to a fremium model

The 3rd pillar of its business model will come from donations and partnerships. Currently, DEFY partners with many institutions that help it to develop its model.

Project DEFY’s team comprises 5 core members in charge of developing partnerships, fundraising, creating content, kickstarting and managing Nooks until it’s become independent.

Each Nook has at least 2 lab managers: one outreach and one management lead. Once a member of the team wants to move out, he has to find his successor.

When a new person steps in the Nook, the team interviews him to hear his expectations and explain him the concept. Secondly, an Induction program is set up to introduce him self-learning and self-governance concepts and connect him to the other Nook users.

No workshop nor class occurs in the Nook as it’s a self-learning space even though whoever can freely organize his own workshop. Every day, a circle takes place to build the community: everyone has to tell his name, what he learnt from the last time and something new about himself.

This year, Project Defy kickstarted a crowdfunding campaign to launch a one-year program for women in September: the “Waking dreams fellowship”. 6 women from the Nook Village will be able to achieve their dream thanks to a monthly allowance, a trainer match support and mentorship. Through this fellowship, Project DEFY wants to generate role models for women in the villages.

In each Nook, once someone enters the space, he is taught how to document his project on Instructables. During a project, each step must be taken in picture and posted on the platform. To do so, a laptop and a smartphone are available in the Nook.

According to Abhijit, this rule is all the more important since the members can improve their English, get useful feedbacks on their projects and will even be able to show their creations while applying to a job.

In parallel, Abhijit and Megha are building a “self-assessment learning platform”. Thanks to this latter, the Nook users will be able to post their project and get more insights from their peers on it.