Mavis Computel Limited
Mavis Computel makes education accessible in rural Nigeria. Its "talking books" take the schools to the children and teach subjects in the learners' native languages. Through group sharing models, they encourage collaboration and make the books affordable in low-income communities. A "Talking Book" consists of a digital pen and a specially printed book. When the pen touches text or pictures in the book, it reads out the corresponding audio, including interactive games, quizzes, multi-language translations, etc. Mavis has developed over 51 talking books so far for literacy, numeracy, health and other subjects – English with Phonics, Storybooks, Mathematics, languages (French, Arabic, Spanish, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba).
Mavis focus on reaching children in unserved or underserved communities through literacy and numeracy programs – which is the foundation for learning. In low-income communities, eighty or ninety per cent of the income comes through NGOs or development programmes. A lot of parents just want to get by and buy food, so they do not care much about education. This has become a lot worse because of Covid, so they cannot pay for the books by themselves. In middle- or high-income communities, over ninety per cent of the users are self-funding.
In some cases, home schooling solves the problem of safety, cost of transportation to school, unavailability of transportation to school, distance to school, expensive school fees, etc. Due to socio-religious reasons, the girl child is often denied basic education in certain communities. The "Talking Books" make it possible for female children to get quality education wherever they are in their own closed user groups. In communities where it is not economically viable to build school structures, the "Talking Books" takes quality learning directly to the learners where they could be supervised by roving facilitators.