Educare

Beta users from school management [Beta Rollout](https://youtu.be/vk6mbDh_qVE)
Educare facebook integration
Educare facebook page for integration
Posting facebook post through educare application
Anonymous authentication in educare application
Educare chat bot

Inspiration

As we all know educational Institutions offer inferior quality infrastructure and education to children. What might be the reason?

Infrastructure deficit-

Most of them do not have proper infrastructures like classrooms, blackboards, drinking water, toilets, and sanitary facilities.
The school environment is so suffocating that the students are dissuaded from attending the classes which is why the dropout rate is also high.
Almost half the government schools in the country do not have electricity or playgrounds.
There is slow progress in building classrooms, labs, and libraries to strengthen government higher secondary schools.
The secondary and higher secondary level government schools do not have adequate capacities, so the net enrolment falls, especially among girls, sharply beyond the primary level.

Corruption and leakages of funds-

Most of the fund which is allotted for the development of institutions gets consumed by corrupt intermediaries.
The fund transferred from the central govt to the state govt to schools involves many intermediaries. The true beneficiary can get only a certain part of the fund.

Lack of proper funds-

Funds is only raised only in some areas. But this may not fulfil all the needs of educational institutions.

So, we found a solution EDUCARE where funds can be contributed from across the globe. Corruption can be reduced as no intermediate or middleware is involved, as the money will be directly credited to the respective education institution. All the infrastructure, and sanitary facilities, can be fulfilled to the max. social awareness is brought up to contributors regarding the needs of educational institutions.

Statistics

The below stat shows that the lack of infrastructure in the schools / educational institutions.

Lack of Infrastructure

The below stat shows that government expenditure on the schools it is very less so that those are all lack with many essentials in the schools.

What it does

Essentials:

In the essentials case flow, the educational institutions will be providing the details regarding their location, and they must enter the essentials or needs for their institution.
So, there are two different essentials, one is a normal essential and the other is an emergency essential. For a better understanding please go through the below example.

Emergency Essentials: Whenever there are floods or any natural calamities there might be a huge loss or effect that should be immediately solved.

Essentials (Normal): All the needs that the educational institutions need like food, books, sanitation, infrastructure, etc.

So, the institution has an option to choose if it is an emergency essential or a normal essential.
If the essential is chosen as an emergency, then these essentials will be verified by the respective district officer.
After the verification, these essentials will be added to the essentials list that will be viewed by the contributors.
All the emergency essentials will be posted on the Educare Emergency Essentials Facebook page. So that the contributors will be aware that the emergency essential is added to the essentials list.
Notifications will be sent to the frequently donated contributors whenever an emergency essential is added.

Endowment: In the endowment case flow, the contributors can view all the essentials added by the educational institutions

The contributors have an option to filter the essentials based on the required amount.
Contributors can filter the essentials based on location as well.
So, the contributor can contribute only if they logins into the application , They can choose the essential they want to contribute, and they can contribute a full amount or a partial amount. For a better understanding please go through the below example.

Full Amount:If the required amount is 5,000. Then the contributor has to pay the full amount.

Partial Amount: If the required amount is 5,000. Then the contributor can enter the amount he/she wishes to contribute.

The proofs will be added only for the closed contributions (required amount is fulfilled).
If is it a full contribution, the educational institution must submit proof of the amount that they have used for their essentials or needs.
Then these proofs will be sent for the contributors to view.
Contributors will receive a notification whenever there are any emergency essentials added to the essentials list.

How we built it

Built on Pega Platform 8.7.3, It leverages most out-of-the-box features that uplifted the Educare. The following design and build strategy were used:

Requirements:To build a robust Educare solution, the requirements needed to be carved out. Solutions were found to collect funds and make educational institutions much stronger.

Design: Pega Express was used to build the basic foundation for the application. Most of the application backbone including Case life cycle, Personas, Channels, and Data types were created here. Also, most of the data elements and UI were built using the power of Pega Express. Utilized a rich set of interfaces provided by Theme Cosmos UI.

Build: The contributor’s stage was broken into small parts so that it is easy for the contributors to finish the task. Essentials can be added according to educational institutions.

Test:Finally, the solution was tested end to end using various test users and channels. Overall, we thank our team to develop this application end-to-end in a span of 6 weeks.

Beta Rollout

As part of our application testing, we have asked few schools to use our application, and we have captured user experience and feedback. Click here to view the testimonial.

Benefits

Educare is not restricted to a particular need, educational institutions can provide any kind of essential that is needed.
Education institutions have an option to choose an emergency essential where needs can be fulfilled much faster.
If it is an emergency essential, we are posting it on Facebook(https://www.facebook.com/EducareEmergencyEssentials) as well as notification will be sent to the frequent contributors.
We are using social media to make awareness among the contributors to fulfil the needs of emergency essentials.
Global issues regarding the educational essentials can be reduced using educare.
Contributors can do their contributions from across the globe.
Amount is directly credited to the respective educational institution. No middleware is involved in this transaction process. Frauds can be minimized by this process.
Most of the manual work can be reduced by using an Educare application.
Contributors can have an option to pay the amount partially. So, they have a choice to contribute the amount how much they wish to.
Proofs must be submitted by the educational institutions. Where they can be used as a reference for the usage of the contributed amount. 11.These proofs can be viewed by the contributor for reference.

Challenges we ran into:

Understanding how to find and integrate with Facebook API’s in Facebook Graph API for posting it in Facebook Page.
Extensive research was needed to understand on the education parameters needed to conclude on how the lack of infrastructure , funds & fraud.
The solution or the problem statement is too vast to be covered as part of this project and can spawn out to looking at the magnitude of the issues we are trying to address.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Team Collaboration and Synchronization
Time management
Conflict Management
Problem Solving
Working in a diverse group
Implemented chatbot to address contributor’s queries.
Implemented guided tour for better user experience
Used Facebook integration for awareness of emergency essentials to the users.
Frequent contributors will get notified whenever an emergency essential is added.

What we learned

Working together with a team and trying to implement all our ideas.
We learned how to do Facebook integration into Pega
We managed our time and complete the work in the given time.
Dividing the work among us, equally and utilizing the resources properly.
We built a chatbot that helps the users to help the contributors with their issues.

Future Scope

It can be used by any funding area in any sector not only in education sector and it has vast benefits.
Implementing it in school Admissions as the part of Educare.
Making the data transparency and protecting it from fraud by using blockchain technology to avoid it from altering the data.

What's next for Educare

In the future, contributors can have an option to contribute either the needs or amount, For example: if the essentials are benches and chairs(infrastructure) if the contributor is ready to provide the infrastructure, then they can contribute it.
Native mobile application for educare with multi language support functionality.