Note: This is probably going to be pretty harsh, but the way I see it is—your website is actively accepting donations, so I should look at this with the same standards I would evaluate any other project that might be a good choice to give money to.
It would be nice to see a lot more specifics in this post.
Firstly: What is your and your team’s background and experience that would lead donors/stakeholders to put their faith in your ability to do this?
Secondly: Creating a university sounds really hard. What stage of this are you currently at? Is this a vision for what could be, without any practical steps yet taken? Is it a plan you have sufficient funding and stakeholders for, and need help shaping the details? Some hints at this are present in Slide 13 of the PowerPoint, but it’s still very low on actual specifics in terms of what resources you have (time, money, staff), what resources have been promised to you, and what resources you need to make this happen. Concrete numbers are good here. How many students do you want for the 2023 Q1 demo? What level of funding/staff do you need for this to be achieved? How does this compare with what you have?
Based on this post alone, I would assume this was still in the idea stage, but the PowerPoint suggests a team and concrete timeline already exists for this. That said, the timeline is very short on low-level details of the plan, while sounding quite fast to my uneducated eye. Do courses usually go from your current stage to national rollout within two years? Do you have evidence of this being completed before, especially by teams similar to yours? I don’t even know if the Spectrum School of Technology is an existing university to test your university courses, an existing high school to test your high school curriculum, or the name of your proposed university.
Thirdly: You also mention that you need help with advisors—what, exactly, do you need advisors to advise you on? What expertise do you need that you don’t have? Also, what do you NOT need advice on—what do you and your team already have completely under control? (This goes back to the first point around background and experience)
Fourthly, the one month silent retreat each year seems like a massive undertaking and radical change, but it has no elaboration either in the post or in the PowerPoint. Why would this do so much good that it’s worth it? Are teachers supposed to teach classes without speaking? How? Has this successfully been done before? Without these details, that makes the idea feel very idealistic and impractical. It honestly sounds like someone said “You know what would be amazing? If we had a silent meditation retreat every year!” and everyone just went along with that without really thinking through the costs and benefits. If the team has thought through the costs and benefits and judged it worthwhile, that evidence should be front-and-center when delivering this idea.
In summary—if you have answers to most or all of these questions, you or a team member should invest some time in making much more comprehensive documentation that answers them. If you don’t have answers to these questions, that’s not a great sign for the project.
Hi Bailey, thank you for your questions. I’m working with Dr. Martin Rayala , Tamas Simon and others to develop this project to redesign not duplicate education. The Enso Circle team from USA will be visiting Uganda next year for our first public gathering and fundraiser for the project. The PPT as stated in this post is tentative not final. Starting a University is not really hard everything that has ever started took great effort. I have already refugee students. I started with a traditional secondary school this year that has 32 students. Only 5% of refugees attend tertiary institutions globally, so we are focusing on refugees, though everyone. We will start with 200 students on our existing land provided by UNHCR and Office of the Prime Minister though we plan to buy bigger land size in future. We decided to redesign our traditional secondary school and start a new university to enroll our own high school graduates. I’m currently enrolled in the EA in-depth Program to hone my EA knowledge and how to apply it to do good the most. Someone with experience in EA courses and EA movement. Some of the questions you’re asking here, are questions we need advice on-in order to develop comprehensive curriculum and programs. Honestly the University will start with EA , design and Tech courses. We’re not receiving donations for the school, the website is brand new not shared with donors yet. The timeline is tentative and we’ll update with details in few months from now.
Small detail: If you’re not currently receiving donations, you should probably take the donation button off your website for the time being, or remove its functionality. It appears to be functioning on the homepage (though not other pages.) While I didn’t try to actually complete a transaction, I was able to access the Flutterwave transfer screen.
It’s good to know you’ve got existing land and are starting at a smaller scale, first 32 secondary-school students and then 200 tertiary ones.
I still do believe quite a lot more documentation is needed to properly answer the questions above, however. They aren’t meant to be answered in a day. While not all the questions above need to have answers, a potential advisor/donor looking through the project should be confident you’ve at least thought of everything and identified gaps where they are present. I’m not saying that you have or haven’t done this, but the documentation I’ve found doesn’t yet reflect this.
Having an existing high-school curriculum being taught is a great step. If that ends up working well according to measurable metrics, that should definitely be highly-placed in the site’s promotional materials!
Note: This is probably going to be pretty harsh, but the way I see it is—your website is actively accepting donations, so I should look at this with the same standards I would evaluate any other project that might be a good choice to give money to.
It would be nice to see a lot more specifics in this post.
Firstly: What is your and your team’s background and experience that would lead donors/stakeholders to put their faith in your ability to do this?
Secondly: Creating a university sounds really hard. What stage of this are you currently at? Is this a vision for what could be, without any practical steps yet taken? Is it a plan you have sufficient funding and stakeholders for, and need help shaping the details? Some hints at this are present in Slide 13 of the PowerPoint, but it’s still very low on actual specifics in terms of what resources you have (time, money, staff), what resources have been promised to you, and what resources you need to make this happen. Concrete numbers are good here. How many students do you want for the 2023 Q1 demo? What level of funding/staff do you need for this to be achieved? How does this compare with what you have?
Based on this post alone, I would assume this was still in the idea stage, but the PowerPoint suggests a team and concrete timeline already exists for this. That said, the timeline is very short on low-level details of the plan, while sounding quite fast to my uneducated eye. Do courses usually go from your current stage to national rollout within two years? Do you have evidence of this being completed before, especially by teams similar to yours? I don’t even know if the Spectrum School of Technology is an existing university to test your university courses, an existing high school to test your high school curriculum, or the name of your proposed university.
Thirdly: You also mention that you need help with advisors—what, exactly, do you need advisors to advise you on? What expertise do you need that you don’t have? Also, what do you NOT need advice on—what do you and your team already have completely under control? (This goes back to the first point around background and experience)
Fourthly, the one month silent retreat each year seems like a massive undertaking and radical change, but it has no elaboration either in the post or in the PowerPoint. Why would this do so much good that it’s worth it? Are teachers supposed to teach classes without speaking? How? Has this successfully been done before? Without these details, that makes the idea feel very idealistic and impractical. It honestly sounds like someone said “You know what would be amazing? If we had a silent meditation retreat every year!” and everyone just went along with that without really thinking through the costs and benefits. If the team has thought through the costs and benefits and judged it worthwhile, that evidence should be front-and-center when delivering this idea.
In summary—if you have answers to most or all of these questions, you or a team member should invest some time in making much more comprehensive documentation that answers them. If you don’t have answers to these questions, that’s not a great sign for the project.
Hi Bailey, thank you for your questions. I’m working with Dr. Martin Rayala , Tamas Simon and others to develop this project to redesign not duplicate education. The Enso Circle team from USA will be visiting Uganda next year for our first public gathering and fundraiser for the project. The PPT as stated in this post is tentative not final. Starting a University is not really hard everything that has ever started took great effort. I have already refugee students. I started with a traditional secondary school this year that has 32 students. Only 5% of refugees attend tertiary institutions globally, so we are focusing on refugees, though everyone. We will start with 200 students on our existing land provided by UNHCR and Office of the Prime Minister though we plan to buy bigger land size in future. We decided to redesign our traditional secondary school and start a new university to enroll our own high school graduates. I’m currently enrolled in the EA in-depth Program to hone my EA knowledge and how to apply it to do good the most. Someone with experience in EA courses and EA movement. Some of the questions you’re asking here, are questions we need advice on-in order to develop comprehensive curriculum and programs. Honestly the University will start with EA , design and Tech courses. We’re not receiving donations for the school, the website is brand new not shared with donors yet. The timeline is tentative and we’ll update with details in few months from now.
Small detail: If you’re not currently receiving donations, you should probably take the donation button off your website for the time being, or remove its functionality. It appears to be functioning on the homepage (though not other pages.) While I didn’t try to actually complete a transaction, I was able to access the Flutterwave transfer screen.
It’s good to know you’ve got existing land and are starting at a smaller scale, first 32 secondary-school students and then 200 tertiary ones.
I still do believe quite a lot more documentation is needed to properly answer the questions above, however. They aren’t meant to be answered in a day. While not all the questions above need to have answers, a potential advisor/donor looking through the project should be confident you’ve at least thought of everything and identified gaps where they are present. I’m not saying that you have or haven’t done this, but the documentation I’ve found doesn’t yet reflect this.
Having an existing high-school curriculum being taught is a great step. If that ends up working well according to measurable metrics, that should definitely be highly-placed in the site’s promotional materials!
That said, I do hope the project succeeds!
Thank you for your GREAT input. I will definitely take your advice.
For more details, we can have a zoom chat if you schedule one. Thank you again for your beautiful comments.