Tania Rosas: Winner of Fast Forward for Scaling Inclusive Digital Education
Tania, a fellow of Cohort 1 of the Propel Fellowship, founder of El Origen, and recent winner of Fast Forward, drives digital education worldwide with her O-Lab app.
Tania grew up with an example of perseverance in social transformation from her home. Inspired by her grandmother, co-founder of the largest public school in La Guajira, Colombia, she became familiar with the challenges of education in her region and saw technology as a key.
She founded El Origen in 2015 to support closing the digital gap affecting young people in La Guajira and providing them with tools to grow personally and professionally.
Together with a team of local teachers, she developed O-Lab, a personalized learning system to create educational content easily, quickly, and interactively. According to Tania, its interactivity allows people to retain more than 80% of the knowledge learned. To adapt to all kinds of communities in vulnerable conditions, O-Lab has a mobile application that works with and without the Internet and translates into any language, including indigenous languages.
During the pandemic, the urgency of technological solutions was greater than ever. El Origen identified the need to use intuitive educational platforms in rural environments and indigenous communities. Thus, they reached over 7,000 users and expanded to new countries such as Peru, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Tania comments:
"Our intention was to make our technology as accessible as possible because we know that vulnerable communities can be empowered through education".
Tania joined the Propel Fellowship in 2022 to find new ways to empower her project. With this experience, she implemented new digital tools, forged alliances with incredible leaders in the region, such as Jaime from Ser Maestro, and gained more funding and training opportunities.
"Undoubtedly, the Propel Community has been the most valuable part of the Fellowship experience. Knowing that there are so many organizations seeking technological solutions made us realize that there is an international community backing us".
Recently, El Origen became one of the few Latin American organizations to win Fast Forward. With this accelerator, they will access more funding, connections, and growth opportunities to continue scaling their incredible project to other parts of Latin America.
From Propel, we supported Tania at every stage of her application, and she emerged as a winner thanks to her organization's work. Giulio Caratelli, Director of Development at the organization, commented:
"Fast Forward is the primary example of how Propel helped us connect with new opportunities. I believe that without Propel, it would not have been possible for us to achieve this".
But this is just one example. Tania and El Origen have been recognized as Young Leaders for SDGs by the United Nations, Obama Young Leaders of the Americas Fellows by the Obama Foundation, Young Leaders of the Americas (YLAI), and other awards.
Tania considers that the biggest key in the social sector is having the support of allies and a community that backs you along the way.
On April 1st, we opened applications for our Fellowship. Join the Waitlist here to be part of an international community of social leaders driving change.
Written by Alexandra Guerra.
