# VoiceBridge — One-Page Project Brief

**Project type:** Non-profit, volunteer-run education technology project. Early prototype and pilot-preparation stage. Not yet a registered charity; we are seeking a local partner organisation in Africa for field execution and fiscal sponsorship. We sell nothing, have no commercial revenue, and **do not handle donations ourselves**.

## Problem

273 million children are out of school worldwide (UNESCO). What they lack is rarely a textbook — it is someone asking a question and waiting for the answer. Strong existing programmes (solar tablets, mother-tongue courseware, broadcast and radio lessons) serve children **who are in school**. A literacy app quietly assumes school, a teacher and a starting level of reading. For a child outside the system, none of the three holds.

## Approach

A low-cost AI voice device that **talks to the cloud AI and to nobody else — no remote human on the line**:

- A child speaks into a near-field microphone → cloud ASR + LLM + TTS → a spoken answer in their own language
- **Shared hub first:** one unit with a loud speaker, so everyone hears every answer and peer learning comes free. A centre needs only one or two units, fixed in place or carried to where children already gather.
- **Handheld later:** one per child, only after validation, enabling individual progress; numbered, stored at the centre, never taken home
- Topic whitelisting, sensitive-term filtering and time-window limits
- **When confidence is low it does not guess:** it asks the child to repeat, and otherwise hands over to the on-site coordinator
- **No raw audio is stored** — only counts, durations and topic categories

## Audience

Africa (country to be decided), children aged 6–15 who are not in the school system. Pilot: one centre, one or two hub units, three months.

## Technical requirement

One small VPS to host a bilingual project website, device dashboard and pilot data. Traffic is expected to be low.

| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| CPU / RAM | 1–2 vCPU / 1–2 GB |
| Storage | 20–40 GB SSD |
| Network | Dedicated IPv4, SSH access |
| TLS | Let's Encrypt support |
| Term | 12 months, renewable based on activity |

## Why a donated VPS matters

The project has no revenue. Early funding goes to prototypes, speech-accuracy testing and local training. A donated server keeps limited money on the child-facing side.

## What we have not yet proven

Speech recognition on children's speech — especially in low-resource languages — is far weaker than on adults: roughly 5% word error rate (WER) for adults, 15–21% for children aged 6–10, and higher in some low-resource settings. **This is the core risk of the project. We will publish our own measured error rate before any pilot; if it misses the bar we do not proceed, and we say so publicly.** One thing we do not leave to chance: recognition may be approximate, but the answer a child hears may not. The most common replies are pre-recorded by native speakers and reviewed one by one; only the long tail is synthesised. Nothing a child hears is generated on the fly. Because there is no human on the call, nobody online can correct a mis-recognised question — the on-site coordinator is the only human backstop, and is mandatory.

## Milestones

| Phase | Timing | Goal | Gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 0 | Month 0–1 | Site live, partner conversations | At least one local organisation in substantive discussion |
| Phase 1 | Month 1–2 | 1–2 hubs + speech test with 20 children | **Intent-routing accuracy ≥ 80%, and ≥ 10 points better near-field than far-field** |
| Phase 2 | Month 2–5 | One centre, 1–2 hubs, 3 months | Mid-term: ≥ 4 sessions per week |
| Phase 3 | Month 5–6 | Cost accounting, iteration list | All KPIs met before handhelds are considered |

## Sustainability and giving back

- Sponsor acknowledged in the site footer
- Firmware, admin backend and documentation open-sourced where privacy and safety allow
- Regular public updates on pilot progress and a spending summary
- **Pilot findings — including what did not work — published for reuse**

## Contact

Name: ______  Email: ______  Website: ______  GitHub: ______

(Available on request: one-page brief, budget, milestones, privacy and safeguarding policy drafts, prototype photos and measured accuracy data.)