Finding Thabo.

There is a lack, particularly in under-resourced communities, of interesting and easily accessible content that provides practical examples of how parents can engage their children in early brain-building interactions and activities. Because of this, many parents are unaware of how or why to engage in back and forth conversations with their young children during critical times of brain development. This lack of interaction contributes to children not developing strong learning foundations before they start school, which would allow them to benefit more from their educational opportunities.

Finding Thabo uses printed pictures in combination with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp chatbots to help guide parents through a range of brain-building interactions with their child.

The core idea of Finding Thabo is to help parents weave activities and engagement with their children into their everyday lives. To do this, The Reach Trust has developed a set of pictures in a similar style to “Where’s Wally” that depict everyday situations.

Once the parent has begun the Facebook or Whatsapp chat, the chatbot sends them this message, “Let’s start! It is best to sit with your child and look at the picture together. We will send a message on Facebook, but encourage your child to look at the picture, not your phone!”

The parent will then be guided by the chatbot through a range of educational interactions with their child. The interactions are designed to build early language and mathematics skills, while activities stimulate fine and gross motor skills. Their responses to the questions will lead to further chatbot prompts which are customised to their user experience.
The Finding Thabo team are currently exploring various routes to scale and sustainability through leveraging ECD centers and corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Here is an example of part of a chat:

Chatbot: Can you find a magic wand?

(parent asks the child to point out the magic wand in the picture)

Parent: Yes

Chatbot: Well done – the magic wand is next to the dog.

Chatbot: How many birds can you find in the picture?

(parent asks child to count all the birds in the picture)

Parent: 5

Chatbot: Have a closer look. There are 7 birds in the picture. Did you see the 2 birds on the roof of the building?

This investment presented the opportunity to:

Embed technology in a nurturing environment in a cost-effective and scalable leveraging chatbot functionality

Test the feasibility of using this functionality in getting users to engage with ECD content and test and experiment with different prompts and question sets

Partner with a retailer that has a significant footprint across South Africa and Africa and who’s consumers fall within IE’s target market (caregivers of children between 0-6 living in resource-constrained communities)

Direct Finding Thabo users to applications on the ECD Launchpad, should they wish to access additional digital ECD content

If using a chatbot to engage users proves effective it could serve multiple functions in future, including supporting the onboarding of users onto ECD applications, enabling practitioner ‘refresher’ training to be offered cost effectively at scale, and creating bespoke solutions to communication challenges associated with scaling ECD programmes.

Finding Thabo also forces investors like ourselves, retailers and social media platforms to carefully consider, monitor and evaluate the risks and potential downside in using technology for good, in this case in a nurturing care environment.

The Reach Trust, The ECD Launchpad founder, has helped more than 10 million people transform their lives through access to free education, health and counselling services on their mobile phones.

The Learning Initiative (TLI) was established in 2014 with the aim of making professional services available to disadvantaged communities. Their multi-disciplinary team of specialists have, in association with the Department of Social Development, developed, tested and implemented a ground-breaking, therapeutic intervention called Blocks 4 Growth that promotes holistic child development in 4-5 year old children.

TLI focuses on enriching the lives of all their beneficiaries (children, parents, teachers, creche owners) by offering support, developing their strengths, transferring skills and changing the culture of education in the creche, home and community at large.

Key components of Blocks4Growth have been utilised in the Finding Thabo activities.