Youth Impact is a youth-led, evidence-based movement based in Botswana with partnerships in over 15 countries. Its mission is to connect young people to proven, life-changing information. In collaboration with governments, the organization identifies, adapts, and scales health and education programs designed by youth for youth, ensuring all young people have the opportunity to thrive. Youth Impact implements three core programs—one focused on health and two on education—that have collectively reached over 260,000 children in primary and secondary schools and delivered more than 2 million lessons.
Despite widespread access to primary education, over 70% of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10 - a crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. While many traditional interventions have failed, "teaching at the child's level" has consistently succeeded, with phone-based adaptations showing remarkable results at 3.2x the effectiveness of typical education programs.
This proven approach is gaining rapid government adoption, with India's Karnataka state planning to reach 700,000 students by 2025. This accelerated scaling creates an urgent opportunity to enhance these programs with AI capabilities, allowing them to reach millions of children while maintaining their core effectiveness in improving learning outcomes.
Phone-based instruction outside regular school hours presents significant scheduling challenges for households. Current estimates indicate that each successful tutoring session requires 30-40 minutes of manual scheduling effort - an inefficiency that becomes costly at scale and reduces available tutoring time. Tech-enabled approaches to automate scheduling would ensure that the majority of time and effort focuses on tutoring rather than connection and delivery logistics.
One proposed solution involves routing voice calls through existing apps or software to enable automated assignment, voice recording, and collection of metadata for call monitoring purposes. This system would streamline scheduling and eliminate the need for monthly manual assignment of student phone numbers.
A key consideration for scaling is the limited availability of tutors to conduct off-hour tutoring phone calls. Tutors are typically able to reach only 8–16 students per school term, significantly restricting the program’s ability to serve large numbers of children. Low-cost methods to simulate targeted instructional calls using generative AI-supported voice-to-voice programming are proposed as a solution, offering a more scalable and cost-effective alternative to live tutoring calls.
These are greenfield projects.