The Open University 

of West Africa

a Heal the World, Inc. project

Heal the World, Inc.

Our organization is incorporated and recognized as a non-prot in the US and Burkina Faso.

Our mission is to create symbiotic networks of learning and investment between the more and less developed worlds.

Our funding comes from Dove Givings Foundation, corporations, and individuals.

Our volunteers are in California and Singapore.

Our projects are in West Africa.

Our vision is that this will empower people in disadvantaged situations.

West Africa

5 of the 10 least developed countries.

The gross average enrollment for all levels of schooling is less than 50%.

More than 1 in every 10 children born, die before 5.

Open Educational Resources

Thousands of free lectures.
Hundreds of thousands of free periodicals.
Millions of books coming into online libraries.
But
Needs to be packaged with succinct pedagogy and a logical user interface.

Harnessing Technology for  Development

Phase I:
Internet cafs are ubiquitous across the lesser developed world, and our rst target for advertising and disseminating content.

Phase II:
Students who do well at the Internet caf level will be invited to summer programs for testing and team building.

Phase III:
Students who do well during the summer program will be sent back with Internet caf kits, they will use these to create mini-campuses across the region.

Phase IV:
Students who successfully complete their 2nd year courses will be given access to 3G devices that will enable them to study anywhere.

Crowdsourced Professors/Mentors

By leveraging the social enterprise nature of this endeavor, a volunteer network of professors/professionals is being created.

More advanced students from existing universities are being recruited to act as mentors.

This will allow for students to pose questions, if after multiple attempts, the LMS and intra-OUWA student discussions cannot set perplexed students on the right track.

Aid and Trade

OUWA will be one of Africas most comprehensive networks of talented people.

At the physical location an incubator and tech-transfer will fund and nurture the grassroots innovations that the students research creates.

Milestones to Date

ESL curriculum donated by Ohana Foundation (estimated R/D cost: USD $10,000,000)
In-kind donation of Salesforce.coms CRM
Custom LMS in development
Invitation to launch the university at QiGlobal 2011

Alpha Expansion Program

Small groups of students (around 10)
Study online at OUWA
Attend summer intensive in West Africa
Act as frontrunners to scale the model to other regions
Partners secured in South Africa and Ethiopia


OER provides a wide pool of free resources capable of being better used to serve less developed countries.

     

With more education and investment, development will increase!

Technology can serve as a solution to the dramatic need of regions underserviced by tertiary institutions.

 ouwa.org www.healtheworld.org