Seeds of Empowerment

The world today is divided into two —the powerful and the powerless. It’s the powerless around the world that remain unvoiced and underserved.

Empowerment will bridge the gap between these worlds and education is the foundation of such bridges, because after all an educated generation is the first to break out of the poverty trap.  Recognizing the gap between human needs and access, Seeds of Empowerment, a volunteer run non-profit arm of XRI, a 501(c)(3) organization, a spin-off of the Stanford University School of Education, was formed with the vision to develop educational tools using mobile technology to provide sustainable development in underserved areas.

The Seeds of Empowerment team intends to plant seeds that will help the underserved break the poverty trap through the development of knowledge, skills and abilities in individuals that allows them to become self-sustainable and make a difference in their life and their communities.  

We provide a common platform for projects, initiatives and entrepreneurial ventures to converge and collectively work towards achieving our objective of empowering the underserved.

Our projects focus on literacy and skill development programs by establishing a micro-creative economy model that tapping into the natural resource, creativity, in the under served parts of the world. We believe that the creativity of individuals in underserved regions can become a vital constituent in the global creative industry and a micro economic development model can, in turn, fuel and sustain literacy programs.

Seeds of Empowerment

Adina's Deck: The Exclusive Detective Agency Specializing in Solving Cyber Bully Mysteries

XRI is collaborating with Stanford University, Motzie Waterford Productions and Manastorm Productions to develop "Adina's Deck: The Exclusive Detective Agency Specializing in Solving Cyber Bully Mysteries" a 30-minute interactive "choose your own adventure" television pilot series geared towards girls 9-14. The series centers around four tech savvy characters who have either been cyber bullies or cyber bully victims and now use their experiences to help solve their peers Internet mysteries. Cyber Bullying is when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another young person using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones (Cyber Bullying dot org). The pilot episode was filmed for six days in May, 2007. Over fifty crew members and one hundred actors contributed to the pilot episode, which was developed by Debbie Heimowitz and Jason Azicri. The show is currently going through post-production.

Adina's Deck addresses the new problem of bullying by use of technology, which provokes severe psychological implications. Studies at UC Davis have linked the neurofrontal cortex in the brain to evidence about uninhibited actions on the Internet. In addition, consequences of cyber bullying range from: depression, anxiety and academic difficulties; to suicide. Cyber Bullying can be more intense than regular bullying, as the the scars can last a lifetime. This problem has become prominent in the last few years and international research is currently being conducted. We are currently looking for funding to produce "Season 1" of Adina's Deck (8 episodes) and for international distribution.

Adina's Deck - Trailer
Production Photos

Pocket-School: Exploring Mobile technology as a sustainable education option for underserved illiterate children

XRI is collaborating with domain experts from multiple organizations, including Stanford University and UNESCO in order to conduct the preliminary analyses.

Migrant indigenous children in Latin America are the children of indigenous parents who travel thousands of miles to find agricultural jobs. Not all indigenous populations are migratory, but more and more, many are leaving their homes in remote rural areas to find a better life elsewhere.

There are approximately 50 to 60 million extremely underserved indigenous people in Latin America, and they reside mostly in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Ecuador. The differences in literacy and access to formal education between indigenous and non-indigenous populations are significant. Despite the fact that there is multidimensional complexity over literacy inequality, among other issues with identity, culture, or politics, providing the children with access to literacy education is the utmost concern of this project.  Recent developments of mobile learning technologies and their increasing affordability seem to create new opportunities for educators to address the learning needs of indigenous children living in extreme poverty. This study is currently going through needs analyses at different villages with migrant indigenous children. The children at each village are being given a chance to play with mobile learning devices that are loaded with learning materials to find if those children would be able to benefit from such devices.

See relevant publications

PocketSchool                                      

Interactive Teaching AIDS

XRI is collaborating with Stanford University and the Medical Research Information Center in Korea in designing and evaluating web-based AIDS education programs.

Based on original IRB approved research, this application targets the vulnerable young adults to promote HIV/AIDS awareness despite cultural and social barriers abundant in many developing countries. To minimize stigma associated with discussing sexual practices, it emphasizes the biological aspects of HIV/AIDS, utilizing animated agents and avatars to maximize comfort and efficacy. The curriculum will be disseminated through information and communications technology (ICT), including mobile devices to promote learning in informal private spaces as well as the Internet.

Our mission is to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention methods to people all over the world through interactive teaching aids. AIDS is a preventable illness and with the proper education it can be controlled and eliminated. Two initial versions of this application are in production – an Indian research version led by a US-based development team and a general Asian Version sponsored by Medical Research Information Center in Korea. This program is to be launched in India, Korea, South America, Africa among other developing countries.       

Website
Animation Demo