Expo Live is a dedicated $100m fund to support projects with innovative, creative solutions to pressing challenges around the world – helping to improve people’s lives, preserve the planet, or both.
The Innovation Impact Grant Programme, which has completed five cycles to date, is already supporting 140 grantees from 76 countries, with more than 11,000 applications received from 184 countries. The programme has an allocation of up to $100,000 per project, as well as expert advice and the opportunity to share their ideas with a global audience.
Expo Live projects look for solutions across 14 different sectors, including agriculture, education, environment, employment, energy and healthcare as organisers look for projects that would not reach their full potential without its support.
In the second of a three-part series of articles, Arabian Business talks exclusively to Oscar Wood, co-director of Seenaryo, a leading specialist in participatory theatre and play-based teaching for marginalised communities in Lebanon and Jordan, which was identified as a grantee under a collaboration between Expo Live and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Tell me about the project: when was it set up? How many people are involved? Where does it operate?
The Seenaryo Playkit app transforms classrooms in Lebanon and Jordan through play. It allows teachers of three-year-olds to eight-year-olds to deliver lessons through hundreds of games, songs and stories, all connected to the curriculum. After piloting in 2017, it was launched as an app in 2020 and has reached more than 25,000 children. Seenaryo is a team of nine, operating in Lebanon and Jordan.
Why was it set up?
The Playkit was initially created in response to the refugee crisis in Lebanon and Jordan, which placed huge strain on schools, new teachers and children who needed to learn while not falling behind on crucial life skills.
The Playkit is now used in all kinds of schools, including private and public schools. The Lebanese and Jordanian governments’ chief concern in schools is their ‘unskilled teaching force’ (Jordan Response Plan) and use of ‘outdated pedagogy’. The Playkit targets the youngest school children, because we know that by the age of six, 90 percent of the brain has already developed.
What is the mission of the organisation? Who is it designed to help?
Seenaryo’s mission is to support marginalised people in Lebanon and Jordan to be powerful agents of their own lives, and positive contributors to society.
How will the grant from Expo Live help? What will it be used for?
The grant was used to reach 20,075 new children in 2019 to 2020 – 99 percent of teachers agreed their students’ learning improved and 95 percent agreed that students were enjoying class more. The grant also helped us develop the Playkit’s content, making it even more relevant to every classroom context. Finally, the grant enabled us to help more than 3,000 refugee families learn from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, by adapting the Playkit’s content into lessons sent via WhatsApp.
What are the future plans for the organisation?
This year, we hope to double the reach of the Playkit. We will simultaneously be rolling out a new, externally commissioned evaluation to thoroughly measure its impact. We also intend to start working in a new country in the Arab region, while moving the Playkit towards financial sustainability by continuing to sell to private schools and international NGOs.
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