Thursday, 15 May 2014

Help us Help 200 Schools, but hurry

At Timeless Lifeskills the three key issues we are addressing are – Relevant Curriculum (life skills needed for shining in the 21st century), Enticing Learning Experience (that appeals to today’s distracted learners) and Affordability (to make education inclusive as it is otherwise becoming expensive and hence exclusive).

The past four years have seen us creating and sharing learning modules on life skills, on platforms such as Scribd and Slideshare. Some 215,000 views, 10,500 embeds, 2,200 downloads, 3010 likes and 584 followers encouraged us to build our website, which we plan to develop as a platform for engaging conversations and productive collaboration.

Our Latest Initiative

A comic ebook on self-directed learning (a skill essential for thriving in a knowledge abundant world but a skill not taught in schools) is an experiment to entice otherwise reluctant learners through a cool form factor. We plan to sell the comic ebook on platforms like Kindle store (at an affordable £2, that is $3.5 or Rs 200) and all revenue generated will be used to create more comics on other life skills.

We have conducted pro bono workshops in India at schools for underserved children and understand that even £2 (Rs 200) is out of their reach. We also need to address the lack of devices to read ebooks in these schools. Thus, we will be translating the comic into Hindi and printing 1000 copies. We will send 5 free copies to 200 schools in India that are teaching underprivileged children.

We have launched a crowd funding campaign to raise £10,000, which is the production cost of this project. Here’s the break-up:

Researching, writing, editing, illustrating, designing: £8,000
Printing 1000 copies in full colour on a good quality paper: £1,500
Packing and distribution to 200 schools: £500
So far we have raised around £5,000 and urge you to consider making a contribution to help us meet our target. You can make an online contribution here by choosing one of the perks or give any amount you like – http://bit.ly/Rclzh9

You can also help spread the word by liking or sharing this post.


Hurry! Our crowd funding campaign ends in a week’s time, on May 20th.