The DeTECHtive: Educating the World with Case #2: Tembo Education

Case #2

What Investigative Work Revealed:

Start-Up: Tembo Education (@TemboEducation)

Entrepreneur: Phil Michaels 

Industry: Education

Education is the key to a bright future. With a quality education, one finds opportunities and resources. While many non-profit organizations, companies, and start-ups have capitalized on the importance of the educational industry, one educational organization distinguishes itself from the rest. Tembo Education. The ‘Uber of education’, Tembo is a social venture member of the IBM Global Entrepreneurial Program. 

Tembo Education works to help children living in urban slums around the world by providing quality education in an innovative fashion. It trains women in their communities to act as “Home Educators” who then educate parents to use Tembo’s curriculum when educating their children. This system provides a double benefit. First, it provides the women who work as Home Educators with the opportunity to earn a minimum wage, almost double what they currently earn on average. Secondly, it enables the parents to receive incentives for participating and teaching their children with the curriculum. Tembo’s format is ingenious. It teaches both the adults in the community and the children. To ensure that parents have successfully learned each lesson in the curriculum prior to teaching their children, Tembo requires them to take a quiz via SMS text to demonstrate their competency. Utilizing readily available technology, the curriculum is accessed and taught via mobile phones. By educating their children and correctly answering the quiz questions, the parents are doubly rewarded. They receive free minutes and texting while their children receive a quality education. Tembo’s mission is accomplished by granting its telecom partners access to the curriculum. This increases the market share of the telecom while spreading the valuable education offered by the social venture. 

Through this ingenious mutually beneficial concept, Tembo differs from other companies that are solely focused on developing an effective educational platform. This start-up is able to impact its targeted community, transform an urban slum and offer a quality education to its residents.

Tembo’s formula is as follows:

Educating children

+ Creating opportunities for employment as Home Educators

+ Increasing Economic Development in the Communities

= Tembo’s past, present and future

My conversation with Phil Michaels, the CEO and Founder of Tembo Education, was both energizing and inspirational. After listening to him speak about his company’s mission, there is no doubt that he will leave his mark on the world. 

Michaels prior venture provided experience, which he leveraged into his new creative venture, Tembo. A former finalist on ABC’s TV show, Shark Tank, and commitment-maker for the Clinton Global Initiative University, Michaels is quite experienced with entrepreneurial life. After Michaels’ experience with fellow Tembo team leaders in Lagos, Nigeria, Tembo became a reality. “Actually living in the slums for two-and-a-half months really helped us understand our end users, the population that we’re serving. This isn’t just an idea that you dream up in an ivory tower. This becomes tangible when you start interacting with customers and speaking with them, asking them questions.” Therefore, testing the business concept and product in the slums with Tembo’s ideal customers, Michaels explains, was crucial to the social venture’s success. 

Michaels shared his proudest accomplishment since the inception of Tembo. It occurred when a young three-year-old boy named Michael successfully recited and pointed to different parts of the body in English in front of his community, fellow students, and the Tembo Education team. These skills were a direct result of the educational curriculum provided by Tembo. It was a profoundly heartfelt memory that Michaels recounted, not only because he and the rest of Tembo’s team saw living proof of the success of their social venture but also witnessed the pride exhibited on the face of this young boy’s mom when she hugged him afterwards. “When the parents see us, you realize this is not just a want, but a necessity...It’s an absolute necessity.” 

As TechDay’s Chief DeTECHtive, it is with utmost certainty that people’s lives will be transformed and enriched around the world by Tembo’s social impact.

Keep your eyes out for next week’s highlighted start-up case report, as the DeTECHtive conducts her next investigation.

Photo Credit: temboeducationgroup.com