Ms Janine Teo led a sheltered life when she was growing up. She lived in a terraced house in Siglap, went to top schools and her “tiger” mum made sure that she aced all of her exams. By nine years old, she was already a Mensa Singapore member.
Her first job as a computer engineer took her to Paris and she later trained hotels globally for a large hotel chain in revenue management.
But, her encounters with street children drove home to her the stark inequalities of the world and reoriented her priorities.
She started a non-profit organisation, Solve Education, three years ago that aims to give non-schoolgoing children and youth access to basic quality education by doing something they enjoy – playing games.
Solve Education uses technology to provide quality education to children, especially those unable to receive an effective education by traditional means.
Her team spent a year talking to street children and found that many, even those with good grades or scholarship offers, needed to work to support their family and could not go to school.
She came up with the idea of developing an educational tool on mobile phones so that children can learn whenever they want to and wherever they are at. However, she was aware of the pitfalls of online education. The completion rate of free online courses, such as massive open online courses, is very low at 5% to 6%.
She and her team worked to reduce these barriers by coming up with a learning game that allows children to challenge one another’s scores and secure jobs with their scores.
“We also found that if they are marginalised from employment, it is nearly impossible to get them to desire to learn skills for the workplace; so we created a job portal that employers can (use to) hire them (by) using their learning scores,” said Ms Teo.
The scores in the game are tied to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, an international standard for measuring literacy and numeracy. Soft skills like diligence, discipline and grit are also measured.
Launched in late 2017, the educational application called Dawn Of Civilisation now has more than 8,000 learners, who have clocked a total of 5,000 learning hours.
Solve Education is working with charities in seven countries, including Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, to push the educational tool out to children who need it.
Two weeks ago, Ms Teo won an award, not merely for her smarts or talents but also for applying her intellectual abilities to help people.
She won the International Intellectual Benefits to Society Award 2018 given out by the Mensa Foundation since 2008. She is the first Singaporean Mensa member to be conferred an international Mensa award.
“Mensa Singapore is very proud of Janine’s achievement on the international platform. In a largely pragmatic society, it is rare that people are willing to actively look for ways to give back,” said Ms Priscilla Lee, president of Mensa Singapore.
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Source: The Straits Times, 24 June 2018