Frequently Asked Questions

It is widely accepted that education is the foundation for long-term development and success of a country. South Korea and Ghana are often cited as examples of countries of similar size and demographics that in 1960 matched in GDP. Korea has surged ahead, fueled by world-class education, while Ghana and its neighbors remain largely stagnant.

Education in Africa is in major crisis, far surpassing the American crisis.
In countries like Zambia where we work:

• Over 30% of children cannot attend school due to cost, crowding, or distance
• Average class sizes are 60-100 students for 1 teacher
• The number of teachers needs to be doubled to hit the 2015 MDG
• Less than 20% of children reach beyond grade 9

Part of the solution is money. While Zambia spends more on education than anything else in the country and major donors pour money into the problem, the funds quickly run out when expanding the traditional education model, especially after a few years. The Impact Model addresses the money issue by using e-Learning to lower costs, while using social enterprises to generate income and support school operations. This sustainable approach can make government and donor funds go much further and for much longer, making possible the goal of universal education.

Part of the solution is quality. Even where students have access to schooling, lack of supplies, untrained teachers, and inferior curriculums prevent students in rural Africa from excelling. Impact Network incorporates a standardized and interactive e-Learning curriculum in partnership with iSchool, which aims to raise test scores. The e-learning platform also lends itself to curriculum improvement, research and evaluation.

e-learning comes in many different flavors. When it comes to e-Learning in rural Africa the rule of thumb is to start with something simple that works, then build on it. For Impact Network, projector-based e-learning is our flavor of choice because it is affordable (and therefore more easily sustainable) and should provide a significant boost in the quality of education. Only one laptop and projector are needed deliver a robust, interactive curriculum to 240 students. It also requires less power (fewer solar panels) and can easily be operated by local uncertified teachers (who are 1/10 the cost of certified teachers). Learn more about our e-Learning Pilot

Co-founder David Seidenfeld spent 2 years in Zambia from 2001-2003, again in 2008 completing his statistics PhD thesis, and now lives and works in Lusaka. During his time there, he learned the language, made invaluable connections, and also secured a grant from the World Bank to build our first school. Having a foothold in a country, understanding the context, and being able to work with locals is critical to success of a new development initiative. Our intention is to work with the Zambian government to scale nationally, but also to soon expand into neighboring countries such as Mozambique and Malawi which have similar environments.

The Impact Network believes in making programmatic decisions based on evidence; therefore, continuous monitoring and evaluation play an important role in our operations and we are pursuing a rigorous impact evaluation to estimate effects of our programs on our students’ education. By the end of 2013, the Impact education model will be fully operational, with an additional 5 schools constructed to match our existing 5 (10 in total). Our research and evaluation program is managed by Director of Research, Dr. Michael Weiss, and fellow researcher Dr. David Seidenfeld, both of whom are leaders in the field of education policy research. The impact evaluation will begin in early 2012 with an expected completion by the end of 2014 and will be conducted in partnership with an independent research organization who will implement a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The evaluation will look at some of the following questions:

• How do children who attend Impact schools compare to children in villages without Impact Schools?
• How do children who attend Impact compare to children who attend government schools in the same area?
• How do children who attend Impact schools implementing the e-learning compare to children attending Impact schools without the e-learning model?

Children will be compared on a host of outcomes using mixed methods of data collection to assess literacy, numeracy, attendance, advancement to next grade, beliefs about education, outlook on future, and more. In addition to impacts on children, the evaluation will investigate impacts on parents and the community, cost effectiveness, and implementation.

Impact's mission is divided between education and social enterprise. If we are able to achieve success in providing quality low-cost education, but the Social Enterprises don't reach 100% sustainability, we would still consider this a success. Even 50% sustainability would be a great accomplishment. Every country in the world uses government funding (and sometimes international donor funding) to support its public education system, as would be the case with our model should there be any gap left by the social enterprises. Still, the goal remains to achieve 100%. For the forseeable future Impact Network will cover this gap through fundraising efforts. The operating cost of each school is $5,000 per year or $50,000 for 10 schools.

Firstly, one of the missions of Impact Network is to make our social enterprises as profitable as possible to offset project costs of school operations. On the project side, Impact presently relies on the generousity of public donors, 100% of whose donations are put towards the schools. On the operations side, Impact Network runs like a bootstrapped startup company, with the Impact team volunteering their time and covering operational costs out of pocket (over $35,000 to date). The team is also committed to personally cover any project fundraising shortfalls.