Haroon Yasin

Taleemabad

Big Idea: 

Taleemabad (also known as the Orenda project) gets affordable, quality primary education to rural kids in Pakistan. They adapt the national curriculum (K-12) into digital format, translate it into local languages, and make learning fun. They excite and equip teachers to use their educational content - via TV and tablets - in the classroom. Orenda provides mobile phone learning apps for kids - games and quizzes - to supplement what they learn at school . Attendance at school and in-home use is boosted through public television spots, geo-tagged app installs and SMS campaigns. They’ve got the kids’ entire day mapped out from breakfast to bedtime so they can learn whenever and however works best.

By the age of 18, Haroon had opened and was running schools in slums for poor or homeless children in Islamabad. As a teacher he saw over and over again that kids were not learning, often because lessons were not in their local language and teaching was dry and static. After a degree from Georgetown in Economics, he co-founded Orenda to create a new way of learning.

Rainer Arnhold Fellows