Konnect (Kishore Batayon)

UNDP South-South|Galaxy Knowledge Hub

Konnect (Kishore Batayon)

A platform that promotes life skills, edutainment, career and counseling for adolescents.

Challenges

Although Bangladesh is a multi-cultural country with relatively high levels of connectivity, students in remote areas often do not have proper technical support or access to digital devices. Additionally, in montaineous and marginalized areas, proper access to the internet can be even more of a challenge. That low connectivity bandwidth and a lack of access to high-tech resources often means that students often can not take advantage of digital tools in order to improve their capacities and learn the ways of the future.

Toward a Solution

The Konnect (Kishore Batayon) platform aims to tackle the challenge of providing solutions for remote areas where there is low connectivity bandwidth and a lack of access to high-tech resources. Konnect targets to connect adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, in order to develop their creativity, capacity, and nurturing abilities through edutainment, offline activities and gamification, and to build a secure cyber productive environment.

To date, Konnect has over 30,000 verified knowledge products, including online academic classes, academic books, psychosocial an life skills educational materials, etc. These knowledge products cover a wide-range of interest areas and aim to improve critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership, and career-related abilities, as well as the physical and psychological well-being of adolescents. The platform also aims to reduce secondary school dropout rates, particularly for girls, and to ensure that youths have access to the proper training, skills, and employment options. Additionally, Konnect helps demotivate and educate teenagers on issues such as addiction, cybercrime, cyberbullying and extremists.

Konnect provides hand-in-hand activities such as Project Based Learning (PBL) based on the Bangladesh 2021 National Curriculum Framework, which helps students to solve their academic-related problems. This makes it a proactive platform for students to share their experiences and ideas. Other websites similar to Konnect such as life-skills-related portal LifeHacker, or mental health-related portal MentalFloss, work with a singular fact or function, but in Konnect, students are able to explore different functions like academics (TV classes, HSC/SSC Prep interactive classes, science experiments & microcontent, madrasha and technical class content, quiz, and assignments), mental health (50+ episodes of Konnect-Alapon Live Counseling, Shahana Cartoon for GEMS Program), Health and Nutrition Program and also life skills (coding, drawing- ‘Akibuki’, Game Development- ‘Cholo Game Banai’, film making- ‘Cinema Banai Ghore Boshe’, career counseling- ‘Zero to One’, and Nasa Space App Challenge).

For improving psychosocial support, Konnect is currently organizing the ‘Alapon Live’ which reaches about 1.6 million adolescents in the country, and the ‘Konnect Cafe’ which reaches about 50,000 people through Konnect’s Facebook page. This helps them to get their desired information from the experts and also provides them an opportunity to interact with them.

This model is possible to be replicated in countries with similar student populations. It fosters a well-informed and knowledgeable youth and encourages students to learn beyond their school curriculum.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar, Policy Specialist (Educational Innovation) and Team Lead (Future of Education), a2i

SDG
03 - Good Health and Well-being

SUPPORTED BY
Aspire to Innovate (a2i) programme, ICT Division and the Cabinet Division of the Government of Bangladesh supported by UNDP Bangladesh, Directorate of Secondary & Higher Education and Directorate of Primary Education

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