Rockflower Partners with Fundación El Origen, Colombia; welcomes Tania Rosas to the Rockflower Partner Advisory Council; and begins first initiative on a joint pilot project with long time partner Community Services Program, Pakistan
Rockflower is delighted to announce a new partnership with Fundación El Origen, Colombia, an organization working to break the cycle of poverty by making virtual learning an option for all students and by focusing on other educational challenges faced by indigenous and rural youth.
The organization was founded by Tania Rosas, a young social entrepreneur from La Guajira – Colombia, who founded both Fundación El Origen and Origin Learning fund, and launched O-lab, an offline app for inclusive and personalised learning designed for at-risk indigenous and refugee children and youths worldwide. The O-lab app is preloaded with educational content, in both the language taught in schools as well as a native language, and does not require students or teachers to have access to an internet connection, a game changer for those in remote locations.
In addition we are extremely fortunate that Tania has agreed to join Rockflower’s Partner Advisory Council. Tania brings deep lived experience and understanding of the needs of rural communities and the struggle to access education. As a political scientist and educational researcher her commitment to making education more inclusive for communities often left out of the technological landscape will be invaluable to Rockflower’s determination to expand opportunities in education and economic advancement to many more women and girls .
Tania and the team at Fundación El Origen expressed a deep desire to focus on Rockflower’s existing partners who work at the edges of some of the poorest and hardest to reach communities, for whom access to digital literacy and technology would be a first. Community Services Program, Pakistan, one of Rockflower’s longest standing partners, has been chosen as the first in a pilot project that will bring digital literacy to 1000 students within the most marginalized and rural populations of Punjab Province, Pakistan. Over the course of a 12 month period, El Origen will train teachers at the Tine Model Girls School to implement the O-Lab app and integrate a learning curriculum designed exclusively for this community enabling them to access and understand the tools needed for 21st century engagement and advancement.