Nabil Raghay

SABAQ

SABAQ is an EdTech initiative that is increasing student engagement and improving learning outcomes through high quality digital content making learning fun and easily accessible to millions. SABAQ designs and develops primary level digital learning resources in local languages that can be also used to supplement regular instruction at school in primary grades and to provide out-of-school children (OOSC) with access to high-quality content that helps them develop literacy and numeracy skills. It is designed to be engaging and interactive, includes animated video lessons, interactive exercises, live-shot video lessons, and story-based instructional content. meraSABAQ Tab is Pakistan's first and award-winning custom-designed Android Tablet containing early-grades apps with comprehensive digital learning content made by SABAQ. The Tab contains apps for KG thru grade 5 for Math, Urdu and Science with new content being developed for Sindhi and English. meraSABAQ Tab is pre-loaded with all content and requires no internet, making it ideal to be used in areas that have limited internet. All content of meraSABAQ is designed for students in Pakistan keeping in view cultural and contextual factors in mind and is fully aligned with the national curriculum. Some teachers use meraSABAQ as a supplementary resource to help children with improved engagement while others use it as a main vehicle of instruction in non-formal settings. meraSABAQ Tabs and apps are being used by over 55,000 students across Pakistan including but not limited to over 30 TCF schools and 222 Punjab Education Foundation schools. Additionally, over 4,000 teachers in GB and AJK govt. schools make use of meraSABAQ's fun Urdu stories and video lessons to improve students' reading skills. SABAQ has recently launched a unique YouTube series, ‘Alif Say Yay' that is a collection of fun video lessons to introduce the entire Urdu alphabet for early grade children. To address the problem of out-of-school children, SABAQ has set up a unique model of helping children in remote areas with no schooling prospects, achieve early-grade literacy and numeracy skills using meraSABAQ Tabs combined with a community-centric non-formal education system. The main objective behind this is to leverage technology to deliver quality learning, build a community-inclusive model and minimal fee collection to support sustainability. SABAQ earlier set up 40 Learning Centers, SABAQ Centers in Aug, 2016, and helped over 1,000 out-of-school children learn using meraSABAQ Tab for over 8 months. A control-treatment, baseline-endline study was conducted using ASER assessments by Coffey International, appointed by DFID. The results of the study show that children learning using meraSABAQ learned 3 times more than those who learned without meraSABAQ. Based on this study, with support from UKAID, SABAQ has established 500 SABAQ Centers in Mirpurkhaas, Tando Mohammad Khan and Tando Allayaar. To select willing and supporting communities, SABAQ vetted over 2,000 communities and selected the ones that showed promise of supporting and sustaining SABAQ Centers beyond the grant period. Today, around 20,000 formerly out-of-school children attend and learn at SABAQ Centers using meraSABAQ Tabs. SABAQ also aims to scale up in the coming years by increasing enrollment numbers of OOSC to up to 100,000 students with 2,500 LCs to cater to them. Lastly, SABAQ is also working with local authorities to put abandoned government buildings to use by renovating them to open up SABAQ Centers for the communities close by. For now, 30 SABAQ Centers have been opened up in such buildings which has garnering interest from governing bodies nearby which can only go on to further strengthen our sustainability.