HEA Alumni Update: Colors of Kindness
The HEA has been fortunate enough to work with a growing number of education innovators who are dedicated to reaching the most marginalized learners with quality education solutions. Bringing these solutions to scale requires commitment, flexibility, energy and buy-in from a diverse range of stakeholders at different points and for different purposes. The HEA’s objective is to provide key support at crucial points in the innovation process and scaling journey, to enable our grantees to build in the requisite components to, we hope, go on to achieve sustainable scale. Our time with our grantees is a relatively short snapshot in what is a much longer journey to scale and it is with great interest and excitement that we watch what our alumni go on to achieve after their time with the accelerator.
One such exciting journey that we have been following with great interest is that of Colors of Kindness — an innovative EdTech solution that enhances children’s social and emotional competencies, which was part of the HEA COVID Challenge cohort in 2020. In this blog we hear from Danielle De La Fuente, Amal Alliance’s Founder and CEO, as she catches us up on the whirlwind ride the innovation has been on as they work to bring Colors of Kindness to scale following the HEA-supported pilot in Bangladesh.
What a difference two years make
Prior to the pandemic, our organization, Amal Alliance, was dedicated to building brighter futures for displaced and disenfranchised children in Greece, Lebanon, and Turkey through education and social development programs. When the pandemic hit, it not only put already vulnerable children at further risk, but it stripped all children of their educational pursuits and ability to play with their peers. Like the rest of the world, we were forced to pivot from our traditional in person classes and explore how to best leverage technology. While many quickly switched to Zoom school, this was not as straightforward in areas with no devices or little to no connectivity. Our ability to pivot and repackage our social and emotional expertise, created opportunities that at the time were still unknown to us.
While most did not anticipate that the pandemic would continue for multiple years, it was clear that the disruption in childrens’ lives would have immeasurable consequences for their development and mental health. As an organization, we sought to solve one of the most challenging problems of our time — trying to bridge the learning losses by strengthening children’s social and emotional competencies to establish the preconditions to learning.
Two years later, we find ourselves scaling our solution, Colors of Kindness, to all primary schools in Greece. While being in a position to scale an initiative could be attributed to timing or happenstance, the trajectory of our organization and our work tells the story of how we have arrived at this point. But what really happens behind the scenes, and how did Colors of Kindness take flight?
March 2020
In March 2020, we spearheaded a COVID-19 Emergency Response Consortium that produced the “We Are in This Together” podcast series released in April 2020. Little did we know, the way we had leveraged WhatsApp and audio instruction to provide instructional tips for wellbeing to caregivers and parents would dramatically impact our future direction and focus. After a fierce competition that spanned June-August 2020, we were selected as finalists of the Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) COVID 19 Challenge. Even with a week of virtual Bootcamp, we couldn’t have foreseen the endless cascade of Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, and Teams meetings that would deprive us of sleep for the subsequent months. See, creating an education innovation is similar to having a child — the sleepless nights, teething phase, terrible twos, the uncertainty, all whilst giving your all to ensure the best possible future for that child.
Sept 2020
Once officially onboard HEA, we had to start implementation of the pilot no later than October. Our team of three worked day and night for 30 consecutive days to design and deliver our education in emergencies program, Colors of Kindness. To get things going, we first identified key partners that would assist in the design phase to ensure localization and who could implement on the ground as we were confined to travel restrictions. We worked with our local partners to understand how the content would be received by co-creating the scripts and running through various samples of our characters (affectionately known as blobs) as we began to create them. We quickly learned that Wonder Woman for example, was not a thing in Bangladesh and we would need a more appropriate reference. Next, we worked with UNHCR, IDEO.org, NYU Global Ties, and other experts who provided valuable input as we set out to create a scalable model. The initial concept was designed for a 10-week implementation delivered in Bangla, Rohingya, and English. This original version would later be translated into Arabic and Spanish.
Upon completion of the pilot and our time with the HEA Covid Challenge in January 2021, the results showed a phenomenal 16.5% increase in the social and emotional competencies of the children in only 10 weeks. The quick turnaround to deploy a solution had left no time to validate our assessment tools, and whilst we had rigorously evaluated our programming, funding was difficult to secure without an evidence base.
February 2021
The next 6 months were an uphill battle. We went back to the drawing board to assess how we could reach as many children as possible and ensure the time and money invested to create Colors of Kindness had not been wasted. As innovators and educators, these moments test your own resilience and ability to reinvent yourself or the product at hand.
Education Above All (EAA) had followed our journey through HEA and were eager to partner to include our SEL content into their project-based internet free resource bank. This partnership was key to reaching a widespread audience, so we repackaged our program into an SEL workbook, which would complement the many learning offerings EAA had. The workbook adaptation has been downloaded in 175 countries without any local marketing, and was later used at the start of the Afghan crisis as EAA quickly translated it to Dari and Pashto. With feedback validating its usefulness, and the sheer magnitude of downloads, it was clear we were meeting a need.
June 2021
One of the HEA partners, Porticus, had also been following our trajectory, and was surprised to hear Colors of Kindness had taken a pause due to lack of funding. Eager to support our initiative, Round 2 of Colors of Kindness, this time in Greece, would require empirical validation through a rigorous evidence base to get future traction. We partnered with the EASEL Lab of Harvard Graduate School of Education, who we had been working with as an anchor organization for the development of the INEE PSS/SEL Toolkit since 2020.
Having understood what type of technology we needed, we linked up with Learning Equality whose Kolibri Learning Platform could meet the needs we were seeking to fill. As we were thinking towards a scalable model, we knew the Ministry of Education of Greece would need to be on board if we were to ever fully integrate into the formal systems. With incredible persistence and tenacity — and contacting nearly 800+ people — we secured the right players, which included six local NGOS who would implement across refugee camps and urban settings, and the Ministry of Education within three schools. This was also an opportunity for us to update the content to incorporate all the feedback received from teachers, parents, and students from the Bangladesh pilot. The feedback loop is an invaluable part of our iteration process as it keeps our focus local and human centered. Lastly, we expanded the programming from its original 10-week format to 16-weeks to align with the academic semester and produced it in English and Greek.
January 2022
Our pilot launched in Greece in January 2022 with 400 children across numerous contexts with both refugee and host community children. At the same time, we were planning to launch two programs in Uganda: 1) A small scale pilot of Colors of Kindness in Nakivale, Uganda where we trained refugee teachers to conduct classes, and established a Master Training model for training in Uganda, which would cross fertilize with our second program; and, 2) Flying Colors, a combination of Colors of Kindness and Learning Equality’s Kolibri combined with academic materials implemented by Humanity For All Foundation Uganda (HAF-Uganda) taking a playful, project-based learning approach in an Internet-free learning environment for out of school learners. Uganda was less challenging in terms of content creation as English is the language of instruction.
It is important to note that while the popularity and demand had increased significantly, funding was not growing at the same rate. As a volunteer led organization with numerous programs happening at once, our team was stretched to its limits.
May 2022
With evidence gathering still at the forefront, we conducted four focus groups in Greece with teachers, principals, parents, and NGOs. During this site visit, Porticus wished to not only experience the classes, but also meet with the MoE to understand the effectiveness of the program. While the official report will be released this fall, the early indicators were already showing promising results. The overwhelming interest of teachers, principals, and NGOs, was further setting the stage for the potential to scale.
The Greek Ministry of Education had launched a Skills Lab initiative the previous year, which symbiotically aligned with the structure of Colors of Kindness. Given the demand from teachers for such a structured program, and the positive outcomes SEL was reaping, the Ministry was apt to scale the program nationwide. While traditionally it would take years to roll out a program across an entire country, the existing structure and timeline of the Skills Lab meant that the infrastructure was in place but we only had 3 months to do so, as it was important to move on the traction the program had garnered.
June-August 2022
“It is impossible to scale in 3 months”
“Your organization can’t possibly fathom growing at this rate.”
The constant echo of nay-sayers is nerve wracking even to the strongest of characters. Perhaps the odds were indeed stacked against us, but weren’t they always? As a social enterprise, the quality of your work should speak for itself and create a ripple effect of impact towards the change you wish to see in the world. You can’t, even for a moment, be discouraged by people saying it can’t happen.
Prior to learning about our imminent scaling process, I, in my capacity as the Founder and CEO of Amal, had registered to two back to back conferences in different countries. Now, suddenly I was maneuvering through meetings as I passed airport security, walked to conference sessions, unpacked at the hotel –- taking remote work to a new level. One after another, I spoke to experts on scale, business leaders, strategic planning specialists, founders of successful startups, UN agencies, and too many large NGOs to recount. While their journey’s were inspiring and each taught valuable lessons, we were not at the same starting point. Most solutions ripe for scale already had a core foundational team in place. Therefore, it was time to evaluate what factors had led Amal to this point and focus on our strengths to propel us into the next stage; but we needed funding, and we needed it fast.
Fortunately Porticus was present when we first learned about the interest of the Ministry to expand nationwide, and they shared our same passion to provide the social and emotional skills children need to prosper in life. They authorized emergency funding to get things rolling, and off we went. Our lean and nimble nature allowed us to move quickly, tapping into the repertoire of skilled individuals we had been accruing throughout the many iterations. We brought on approximately 20 contractors and a few companies from June-July, each serving a particular function for the short-term, which would allow us to achieve in the long-term.
Present
Looking back, I can’t help but experience tremendous joy and pride in the work we have done! Our team, our board, advisory boards, volunteers, interns, and dedicated individuals who have helped us learn and grow. Two years ago we were competing for the opportunity to design a solution for education in emergencies. Now, with the ongoing crisis and continuous disruption to children’s lives, our solution is more needed than ever. What started off as a pilot in Bangladesh with 137 children, has touched the lives of over 250,000 children around the world, and will reach millions in the years to come. There are however many missing pieces of the puzzle that must connect to ensure sustainability. Most notably, funding to foment a strong program that can continue to flourish.
While I can’t predict the future, I am hopeful about what the cards have in store for us. Scaling Colors of Kindness to all schools and refugee camps across Greece is only the beginning of our next chapter, as it will serve as a case study on how to effectively integrate whole child development into both formal and non-formal structures. This roadmap will allow motivated governments and organizations to uptake our programming or replicate a similar model that serves their needs best. With help from our partners we can assist governments to enrich their education systems and understand the benefits of emotional awareness and regulation and how they are so closely intertwined with academic achievement. Lastly, while our programming is currently designed for primary ages 6–12, we plan to expand to early childhood to reach the tiny tots ages 3–6. We also plan to augment our teacher training so that teachers can not only acquire the professional development they deserve, but can find ways to take care of their own wellbeing as it directly affects the children.
As we look ahead, we are ready to embrace current and prospective partners and donors that share our vision and want to ensure we build bright futures for all children!
Find out more about or contact Colors of Kindness and the Amal Alliance here.
