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Children love to tell stories. However, in some parts of the world, their creative voices are never heard. Seeds of Empowerment is determined to provide these children with a voice.

The Seeds team collects children’s stories through storytelling competitions in underprivileged urban slums or remote rural villages in the developing world. The winning stories are translated, illustrated, and published. The revenue generated from story downloads is sent back to the child who won the competition. The goal of this program is to raise $30 a month for each child who wins a story competition. This money will pay for his or her educational needs, including textbooks, uniforms, and one meal a day.

Here’s how our model works:

We promote literacy for children and youth living in poverty-stricken areas by mobilizing them to become empowered and original storytellers. Our volunteers conduct storytelling workshops that teach children to use the PocketSchool mobile learning device. We collect these stories and the best work is published internationally for mobile learning applications at mobile application stores (e.g., Apple app store or Amazon kindle ebook store). The proceeds of these mobile application sales return to the storytellers, their families, and communities to promote entrepreneurship and support the local education system. 

We market the packaged content (i.e., selected best stories) as a mobile application series suitable for mobile application stores. As shown in the figure, the mobile application is a short story book that provides illustrations, text, and a voiceover.

We carve a very appealing low-cost niche in the market for children’s literature (e.g., $0.99–$2.99 per ebook application). The revenue from mobile stories are used to pay for the local storytelling competitions, translations of stories into English, the operation of involved NGOs, and most importantly, the child who created the winning story.

We additionally advertise and ensure that the proceeds are delivered back to villages to fund a new generation of creative innovators and young entrepreneurs.