We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Afua Branoah Banful who goes by B.B… We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Afua Branoah below.

B.B, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Aneta is the Greek word for ‘easy’ and the name AnetaEd reflects our mission to make it easy for any child to access curated enrichment and educational content from across the internet.

Imagine a world in which every child you see on a phone, or tablet, is on an exciting, personalized journey through content that is teaching them and growing their love of learning. This is what Aneta has set out to do.

The internet lays the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. There is great content the kids want to engage with that we can use to tackle challenges in education today. Think of falling early literacy and numeracy skills, achievement gaps, teacher shortages, and pandemic learning loss.

So why don’t we see this magic of the internet at scale? Well, it’s simply too laborious for adults to consistently put enjoyable, educational content in front of kids. Between the burdens of filtering through the vast quantities of content and the work of then being physically on hand to navigate the kids from one line or resource to another, it is just impractical. This is why most of us stick the kids into a handful of sites and apps.

However, you wouldn’t take a child to visit NYC and then confine them without seeing the sights would you? Nor would you drop the child in the middle of the city and ask them to find the sights on their own. When it comes to kids’ internet use, we are in these two extremes.

The reality is that kids ages 2 – 12 are on screens an average of 4 hours 44 mins each day, that is almost 5 hours every single day! For most of those kids, that is even more time than the instruction time they have in class. But that time on screens is squandered on the consumption of mindless content instead of engaging the kids in their learning in ways they find enjoyable and relatable. What a missed opportunity!

The Covid-19 pandemic made us all reassess how we live in many ways. In my own home, I was struck that despite my dedication to supporting my kids’ education and the flexibility of my work which allowed me to be constantly present, I struggled to help my kids to use digital learning resources.

I wondered about how other families were coping. What I learnt was how uneven kids’ experiences were depending on the availability and technology know-how of their educators and caregivers. I was deeply bothered by the huge disparities in educational outcomes by kids’ demographics. A boiling point that compelled me into action was when I learnt that something as trivial as an adult leaving for work early, could keep a child from learning all day – even if devices and internet connection was not an issue.

B.B, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Here’s a way I jokingly sum it up: I’m an economist by training, a management consultant by profession and an Ed Tech founder by calling.

I grew up in Accra, Ghana and the thing that stands out most about my childhood to me is how much my parents prized learning and spared no effort in getting me and my two siblings the best education experience they could make for us. Learning was not something that you did in class alone. We always had additional resources – videos by Bill Nye the science guy, nat geo kids magazines, books, games and even full on textbooks – to enrich what we did at school. My two undergraduate degrees for MIT and a Doctorate from Harvard University have something to do with those experiences.

When I became a mom, I sought to make learning part of daily life for my kids. I was thrilled by the variety and creativity of the resources for preK – elementary available on the internet. However, there was a big catch. I found that to milk these resources for their potential took more effort than I could realistically sustain.

I decided that ‘parental support’ tools should actually support with the help adults need – navigating kids and supplying dynamic content ideas and digital organization – not just blocking access. I looked around for a solution such as this and when I couldn’t find it, I decided to build it.

Enter AnetaEd.com. It is a platform targeted to educators and families of kids ages 2 to 10 years old. Aneta uses images on a map so that even pre-literate kids can independently navigate curated journeys across the internet making it easy to provision digital resources to kids in class or at home without any burden on caregivers.

Think about your Spotify, Pandora or Apple music playlist and the convenience and discovery they bring to you. Aneta features shareable ‘playlists’ of links, apps and urls that take away the work from adults of finding the content to put in front of the kids. We call these Anetapacks. Can you imagine getting as much out of your music streaming app without playlists? We shouldn’t have to use the internet without Anetapacks either.

I am most proud of the fact that Aneta has the potential to transform the learning experience of so many children. It is well known that parents’ income and education is a strong predictor of a child’s own educational outcomes in large part to the impact of parental guidance on what and how the child learns outside of class.

Aneta stands to make it possible for every child to be guided in and out of the class to access content that grows their minds and cultivates their love of learning. And Aneta does this not through any radical change but through something kids do right now – get on a screen.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

My approach is to be helpful to the clients in all things around parenting in the digital age.

The primary way is that every week, we make educators and parents aware of a Digital gem. This is typically a totally free resource on the internet that engages or enriches kids in some way. So far, we have sent over 56 resources and counting. (https://AnetaEdBlog.com)

The other way we try to be helpful is through a blog on how to make screen time for kids 2 – 10 engaging and educational. The topics are informed by my own experience mothering 2 young kids and those of friends and family. The idea is to make it practical tips and tricks for parenting available.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://anetaed.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anetawayfinder/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnetaWayfinder
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aneta-ed/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_all%3BYEtAvPpQSsmmlKGpDUOF1w%3D%3D
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnetaWayfinder
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@anetawayfinder