Winner – Tesis Time (Ecuador)

Johnniel Rojas, winner of the Youth on the Move Innovation Challenge, a Venezuelan living in Ecuador, started Tesis Time, Transforming thesis creation around the world. The endeavor aims to improve people’s living conditions by supporting their professional and personal development and their societies, through education and access to employment.

“I came up with the idea to develop an app to learn scientific investigation methodology. We launched the app in Ecuador and later realized this was an issue for people all over Latin America. Our app has been downloaded over 40,000 times in different countries in Latin America. 35,000 students have used our learning methodology, and we’ve helped them graduate and accelerate their degree process, improving their insertion in the job market. Currently, 3,000 students use the app each month. There are over 3,000 hours of content.”

Johnniel explained the concept behind the app: “I was always a slow learner. My mother had a very creative way of helping me study, we would paint, sing, or draw to learn and study. Once I was in college, facing the scientific investigation methodology, I found myself going back to my mother’s empirical methods to be able to understand. This is the base for the teaching methodology of Tesis Time.“

“After launching the app we realized that most of the users were part of vulnerable communities in Latin America. Education is a way to change your reality and climb out of poverty. This has motivated us to develop programs to improve the user’s professional skills. Our next step is creating an educational section on the app where migrants can improve and develop their professional skills in their host communities.”