From Tampa to Nigeria to Clinton’s Hult Prize Finals

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At the end of his 11-week stay in Nigeria, Phil Michaels ’10, MBA ’15, M.S. ’15 witnessed something that brought him to tears.

It was the graduation ceremony for the 60 children enrolled in the pilot program Tembo, a curriculum for at-home instruction for children 0–6, living in the urban slums of the world, using mobile phones. Michaels has been leading a team of five since last October creating this social enterprise — a for-profit company addressing a social need.

And at the graduation ceremony, where the children had been using the curriculum for less than four weeks, a mother beamed with pride as her 3 year old read from a Tembo book aloud to the crowd. The performance was immediately followed by gasps from the crowds and the signing up their own children for the program.

This thing that was so amazing, that was likely changing the trajectory of this child’s future, had just been a tiny thought by this group of UT students less than a year ago, and it was making an impact.

“I’ve had more emotional breakthroughs in Nigeria I think than I’ve had in my whole life,” Michaeals said. “I feel like we’re not reaching enough children, to be honest. There’s this urge inside of me where I feel like I’m not doing enough, and I want to continue doing more. And it’s not that I just want to continue doing this, I know that I need to, after seeing the impact we’ve made already. It’s not a want anymore, it’s a necessity.”

It was a moment Michaels will remember for a lifetime.

“Tembo is not only a way to travel the world, cover living expenses, but also a way to fulfill my passions and dreams,” said Michaels, of Linwood, NJ, who after graduating in 2010 in pre-medicine worked for the New York Yankees team physician. During that time he became a season four finalist for Shark Tank, where he discovered his passion for entrepreneurship and returned to UT for graduate work.

Tembo was created and developed for the Hult Prize, a competition for $1 million in seed money for which the Tembo team will give their final pitch next Saturday, Sept. 26. More specifically, the Hult Prize, in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), is a startup accelerator for social entrepreneurship, which brings together college and university students from around the globe to solve the world’s most pressing issues. This year’s theme, selected by President Bill Clinton, is Early Childhood Education in the Urban Slum and Beyond.

In researching the theme of the competition the team — Michaels, Ulixes Hawili ’17, Samantha Taranto ’15, Sercan Topcu M.S. ’14 and Brent Caramanica ’16 — identified one of the best early childhood education curriculums in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY USA). They narrowed the location of where to provide this curriculum to sub-Saharan Africa, because there are 100 million children 0–6 in the world, Michaels said, of which 50 million live in sub-Saharan Africa, “so we’d have the greatest reach.”

What was left then, was how to distribute their product. “We discovered the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world was Nigeria, so we said let’s use mobile phones. They’ve tried schools, they’ve tried the brick-and-mortar approach, but it’s not accessible to every child worldwide.”

What is more accessible are mobile phones. Tembo trains local home educators on the curriculum, the home educators go into the homes of the parents in the slums, teaching the parent and then the parent teaches the child. Each home educator has an assignment of 25 different parents and continues communication with them through SMS messaging. After running the pilot for three weeks, the home educators requested continuing with the project, so the team trained the home educators to run the business on their own.

While Tembo charges a nominal amount for the curriculum, it is less than private tutors and private schools, and provides a higher quality curriculum than public schools, which act more like daycares for children 0–6 years old and aren’t readily accessible. In addition, the home educators are paid a wage above average for the area, lifting them up out of poverty.

Taranto, a finance graduate with a minor in education, works with Tembo’s education partners on the curriculum and hosts weekly Skype calls with the Nigerian team of 15, who are representing 19 different communities in Lagos, Nigeria. They are servicing 60 children, with a waiting list of more than 100.

“They are extremely passionate, excited home educators who see the value Tembo offers their community. They are what makes this project so successful,” said Taranto, of Staten Island, NY. “I have done work in Africa with education and empowerment projects in Kenya prior to this, but this project is a business — which makes this even more special, because it is sustainable, and that’s what is so important to really make an impact.”

The team were able to make quick contacts in the country because of the research they did before going, including assembling an advisory board that includes representatives from Ashoka, TiER1 Performance Solutions, Verizon, OMEP (World Organization for Early Childhood Education) and GSMA. But also because of Michaels’ peer in the MBA program, a Nigerian whose father works as the head of protocol for the Lagos state government. The team was introduced to many influential players and were able to spread their message quickly, including Michaels and Taranto giving a presentation to the vice president of the country.

Hawili, who is majoring in both mathematics and economics, said his experience in developmental economics has enabled him to play a fundamental role in the architecture of the overall business strategy of Tembo, its social responsibility agenda, wage/labor structure and its core financial model.

“My participation in Tembo has consolidated my passion to implement policy and business strategy that will culminate in the alleviation of poverty, and thus human suffering,” said Hawili, of Los Angeles.

Tembo is starting in Nigeria, but the plan is to expand into Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Liberia within five years. When they release their mobile app (in the incredibly near future), it’ll be accessible to people globally. The potential to use their method for distributing other information — financial education, parenting tips, health care, small business development — gives them a lot of options moving forward.

Tembo advanced in the competition in March, beating teams from schools including Harvard, Princeton and Yale. They spent this summer testing their business on the ground in Nigeria as well as participating in the Hult Prize Accelerator, which is an incubator for the six social enterprises participating in the final round.

This accelerator, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was home for six weeks as these students work alongside companies such as IDEO, a worldwide global innovation, design and consulting company.

A final round of competition will be held during the CGI annual meeting in September 2015, where the winning team will be awarded the $1 million prize. Whether or not they win, Tembo will continue operating their business with Michaels and Taranto committing to move there for at least a year.

The team has spent more than 80 hours a week on this project, something that wasn’t done for class credit, especially as the final pitch looms but even more so as each becomes more committed as they see the impact Tembo is already making in Nigeria.

“We work over 80 hours per week on Tembo,” Michaels said. “It’s not work when you do what you love,” which he followed up with a quote by Nelson Mandela: "There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

Read testimonials on Tembo’s website, watch videos about their time in Nigeria on Vimeo and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.