SPONSOR-A-POD

FROM THE FOUNDER ................................................................................................. WHAT IS 40K PLUS?..................................................................................................... THE VISION .................................................................................................................. HOW IS IT DIFFERENT ................................................................................................ WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?........................................................................................ IT’S NEW BUT IT’S WORKING .................................................................................... SPONSOR A POD ......................................................................................................... HOW CAN WE CONNECT TO OUR POD?................................................................... WHAT IS YOUR MONEY FUNDING?............................................................................ ABOUT 40K ................................................................................................................... HEAR IT FROM A DIRECTOR ...................................................................................... CONTACT US ................................................................................................................

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We built a school in India. It was a bucket load of work, and it took us five years. The most significant lesson we learnt though is that education does change the trajectory of someone’s life.

It wasn’t enough. There are simply too many kids in the developing world who do not have access to a good education. Frighteningly, in India alone that number is one hundred and ten million. Also, we’re too ambitious to make an impact limited to 200 kids over 5 years.The 40K team is made up of

very ambitious people. We’re all trained lawyers, engineers, business folk and the majority of the team have masters degrees. Our board is made up of partners of big professional services firms, C-Level

professionals, and leaders in education. We are only going to commit our professional lives to this if we can do it at a much bigger scale.

We needed to find a better way. We needed to find a more cost-effective way. We needed to find a more scalable way.

And we have. It’s called 40K PLUS.

What you read in the following pages has been the culmination of seven years work. I hope that you are as excited as I am about the impact we can have if we join together.

- Clary Castrission

FROM THE FOUNDER

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WHAT IS A 40K PLUS POD?

40K PLUS pods are dynamic learning spaces in local villages for children of primary school age. Kids come after school for 2 hours per day for tuition in English and maths.

We hire local ladies who live in the village to run the program.We’ve built a digital curriculum that is taught through android-platform tablets

to encourage mastery and peer-led and self-paced learning.

What it is What it isn’t

Two hours, after school class with independent curriculum

School or casual playgroup/nursery

Maths, English, reading Science, art, history, music

Primary-aged High school

$AUD1 per month Free

Room in a village Traditional classroom or school

Use of tablet technology to facilitate independent learning and self-paced mastery in curriculum levels

Technology class

Facilitated by a woman from the village Run by a qualified teacher

30 kids per pod

Math &English focus

Androidplatformtablets

Local woman

facilitates

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THE VISION

40K aims to educate 40,000

kids through 1,250 40K PLUS

pods.

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40K is aligning itself with 21st century technologies and building off the proven success of education pioneers such as Salman Khan (Khan Academy). However, we’re bringing it offline and into villages!

One of our biggest challenges in India has been solving the teacher issue for our pods. Put simply, we cannot incentivise top class teachers from the city to go to the villages. We instead employ local women who are passionate about teaching but we face the challenge that they are not qualified.

We’re tackling this challenge head-on by leveraging tablet technology.

We have built 118 educational modules (across maths, English speaking and English reading) that have been turned into video and installed on 7-inch android tablets.

The videos allow the children to work at their own pace. They can watch the video as many times as they like, and they can pause and rewind it when they don’t understand a concept.

It might take one child one day to understand how to count to twenty, and another child three weeks. The key goal is that they master the concept, no matter how long it takes.

Just like Scouts, we’ve attached a badge scheme to incentivise the children to work towards achieving mastery in the lesson.

Each of the modules get harder and harder as a child progresses. We’ve

As soon as a child completes a module, an embroidered badge is awarded and sewn on to their 40K PLUS t-shirts.

We’re bringing the ethos of innovative technologies and a sophisticated learning model into a village environment.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?

The curriculum comprises of three pyramids (English, maths and reading modules). Each pyramid is made up of 15 to 20 skill based badges, which children work towards. Pictured above: Three sample badges.

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WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

“A poor quality education is little better than no education at all.”

“We have a 40K PLUS pod in a village called Maranahalli Bande, a community of quarry workers north of Bangalore. Let me tell you about two families I have met.

The first family owns three trucks, earning four times more than the majority of their neighbours- enough to send their three children to a private school. The siblings all speak outstanding English and have great aspirations in their lives. Teju, aged 13 said, “I want to go to college and become a teacher. I will be excellent at it. I want to become the best teacher in my school.”

In the second family I have met, the father died 18 months ago and the mother works in the granite quarry.

She has two sons who are painfully shy, hiding away behind their mother. Both went to the local government school but the oldest failed English in the Year 10 exams, meaning that he cannot progress to college. He is now working full time in the quarry with his mother.

The youngest son, aged 14, has started to break granite rocks outside of school to help put food on the table. His mother is keen to get support so he does not follow in his brother’s footsteps.

There are many reasons the local government school failed these kids; like most government schools in rural areas, the school is horribly under-resourced, the teachers are severely undertrained and are often absent on average 2 days per week.

We’ve learnt that rural government schools are little more than child-minding services, and that children drop out at the age of 13 or 14, when they can start work to support their families.

This demonstrated that a poor quality education is little better than no education at all. Yet, it showed us the enormous opportunity 40K has. We can level the playing field, putting an end to these stories.”

Rachel Bennett, 40K Country Manager, India

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6 FEBRUARY 2013We have a 40K PLUS boy who has very recently been given the nickname ‘Jana.’The boy is 8 years old and when he first started at his local 40K PLUS pod, he struggled with anything from basic alphabet to counting. He could read out A (they pronounce it ‘yay’- pretty cute).. B.. C.. but then became stuck on ‘D’. However, we’ve discovered there’s been a shift. After two-months attending 40K PLUS, he now can read all the way to ‘M’ by sounding out the letters- to his delight he keeps showing off his progress by reciting

the alphabet song to ‘M’ (hmmm… over and over and over and over!) Turns out that this change has grabbed the attention of his teacher and buddies- his nickname ‘Jana’ actually means intelligent. Jana is from a village called Dhasanayakanahalli in rural Bangalore, India. A 40K PLUS pod was set up there in November 2012 as pod number 10. Since then, 18 kids have enrolled. The Dhasanayakahalli pod was always going to be a challenge for us. The village is small and the nearby school has barely any kids attending. Turns out, every single one of the 18 kids enrolled continue to come

to the PLUS pod each day, learn new things and slowly but surely – become little geniuses. Jana’s pretty damn proud of his new name and ‘standing’ in the community. A child being able to get to ‘m” may not seem significant. However, he got there in 2 months because he’s been at 40K PLUS. Imagine where he will be in 2 years, as he attends each day. 40K PLUS is giving him that chance.

IT’S NEW BUT IT’S WORKING!

1040K PLUS

pods300 Kidsenrolled

Ran by19 staff

Equivalent to running a whole decentralised primary school for $70,000 per year.

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By donating $10,000 in the first year (and $5K for 2 years thereafter)*, you can enable the set up and running costs of an entire 40K PLUS pod in a village.

This kind of donation has an impact on the lives of 30 kids as well as their whole family in later years.

SPONSOR A POD

Benefits

We have worked so hard to make 40K PLUS cost-effective so that we can make it scale. A typical child sponsorship will cost $50/month.

We want to make your dollar go as far as possible, and to think that you can sponsor 30 children and an entire education program, makes this sponsorship 3 times more effective.

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*Other payment plans available, including $7,000 (first year), and $7000 (for 2 years thereafter).

Receive video footage and share on social

media

Receive letters from your pod

Skype into your pod Personally visit your pod

Request a 40K speaker

Receive reportsTrack your pod on our website’s Google map for updates

Recieve photographs of your pod and village

We’ve launched the Sponsor-a-Pod program to transform how people donate.

The effect this sort of funding has is very real. It has an effect on the kids and the community and that’s something we want you to be a part of. Whether this is via the occasional video or even personally visiting your pod to see first-hand the effect an education can have on these kids lives. Connection points are optional and are tailored to suit the interests of your team.

When the pod is opened you’ll be recognized as the pod sponsor and get an ongoing report about the village, enrolments, evaluation results and challenges faced.

Education Changes Lives.Educate children living in poverty.

HOW CAN YOU CONNECT TO YOUR POD?

Education Changes Lives.Educate children living in poverty.

SET UP COSTSCurriculum • Set of English lesson plans• Set of maths lesson plans for 1st

to 7th grade• Production and design of digital

curriculum (amortised)

Teaching and Learning Resources• 30 x learning resource kit

(including pencil cases, stationary set and individual workbooks)

• 30 x PLUS T-shirts• Maths teaching aides (including

fraction circles, wooden shapes, counting blocks, abacus, geoboard)

• English teaching aides (MP3 Player with songs and stories, flashcards, alphabet cards, dictionaries)

• Teaching resources (including stationary and attendance registers)

Teacher training• Teacher training resources• Community engagement

Infrastructure• Furniture (including desks and

chairs, signage, whiteboard, display boards, storage unit, book stand).

• Equipment• 8 x Lava E-Tab tablets with

educational apps (7 inch, Android Platform)

• 150 x books in English and Kannada (local language)

RUNNING COSTSTeachers• Teachers salary

Monitoring and Evaluation• Baseline testing in maths and

English• Portion of field officer

salary• Poverty indicator testing• Unit tests• Badges

Equipment• Maintenance and replacement• Digital curriculum costs

Rent• Rent of the room

WHAT IS YOUR MONEY FUNDING?

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The 40K Foundation was founded in 2005 by a couple of naive university students who thought they only needed $40,000 to build a school for the children of exploited workers in granite quarries north of Bangalore, India.

Five years and $500,000 later, that school, The Banyan (pictured below) opened. Today, there are 180 students who go to the Banyan school every week day.

The School has since been handed back to 40K’s local partner to operate. The Banyan School is a clear

demonstration of our ability to commit to and deliver a project in the Indian environment.

Throughout the course of the five year project, we learnt a lot. First and foremost we learnt that education can change lives. The children from the quarry community are the first generation who have had schooling, and thus the first generation who will have a chance to live their lives outside the granite quarry.

Secondly, in the amount of time spent in India, we learnt that the bricks and mortar approach to solving the

ABOUT 40K

education solution was simply not scalable. There are 110,000,000 children in India alone who need access to a better education. We needed to find a better way.

We are very proud that we spent significant time after the school opened learning how to do it better, more-cost effectively, and more scalably. The 18 months of reinvention through 2011-12 were the hardest for us.

We weathered the storm, and now we are so excited about our new approach. We hope you are too.

The Banyan school was completed in October 201011

The Banyan school was completed in October 2010

The 40K Board travelled to Bangalore, India in March 2013 to hold the board meeting and visit the 40K PLUS pods. This is an email that Board Director, Peter Dunne, a partner from Herbert Smith Freehills, sent back to Sydney

I am sitting on a rock, on the edge of a quarry. The drop below me would be 300 feet, or so. There are probably 100 people, and 15 odd trucks, in a hole the size of the Sydney Botanical Gardens, I guess. I put sunglasses on a few minutes ago, because the sun was stinging my eyes. No one down below has protective eye-wear of any kind, nor shoes for that matter.

Directly in front of me, there are 4 women carrying rocks, on a weave basket (about the size of 5 large dinner plates), on their heads, up a rickety wooden plank to the side of a pick-up truck where the rocks are deposited. The women get paid based on the amount loaded into the truck.

To my left, two men in dirty rags, each smash a sledge hammer into a rock ledge to try to break it open. They don’t

seem to be making much head-way. This is absurd. In the west, we have machines that do everything that is being done by hand here. Workers in the quarry get paid $2.00 a day. The majority of the workers live, with their families, in makeshift huts next to the quarry. Stick roofs, tarp covering, the size of a medium size meeting room at work.

A small boy runs into view, chasing his father up a dusty path that leads up out of the quarry. He falls down flat, and starts crying. His father comes back, picks him up, and literally dusts him off, much as any of us would do back home – minus the quarry dust. They walk back out of the quarry. What does it feel like to do this day after day, year after year?

Clary Castrission the 40K CEO, tells the story of the quarry man who would buy a bottle of brandy each night, for $1.40, because it was the way he knew to get to sleep, when every part of his body was hurting. A standard shift starts at 5:00am, and goes for 12 hours.

The two men with the sledge hammers

have achieved some success, and have broken off a slab 80cm by 80cm. It took over half an hour.

At the edge of the quarry is a village of sorts. In that village is a 40K Plus pod. The cost of setting up, and running that pod is $10,000 AUD in the first year, and only $5,000 after that. The teacher’s salary is $15 per week, for 10 hours. From the pod’s door, you can see the quarry. Outside the school there are 5 goats. Inside, it is incredible. I wondered if there would be anything positive in this email. There is.

There are 21 children and one teacher sitting down in a space that is about 12 square meters. The children’s faces light up when we come in. They are now counting to 10, with such beautiful rich accents.

HEAR IT FROM A DIRECTOR

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40K Foundation Australia40K.COM.AU

Suite 202, 90 Pitt Street Sydney NSW 2000 All Correspondence to:

GPO Box 1730 Sydney NSW 2001 +61 2 9221 4030

40K Foundation Marketing and Communications ManagerAlexi Miller

(p) +61 2 9221 4030 (m) 0408 304 844

(e) Alex@40k.com.au

The 40K Foundation Australia operates an Australian DGR Type 1 tax-deductible endorsed Overseas Aid Fund.

We are a proud member of the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and a signatory to the ACFID Code of Conduct.

CONTACT US

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