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SINGApreneur Stories: Ekaterina is making mathematics accessible for everyone
At SINGA, we believe innovation is fostered by new ideas and new perspectives. That is why we strive for inclusive entrepreneurship, where everyone, no matter where they come from, can fulfil their potential and contribute to shaping an innovative economy in Switzerland.
SINGApreneur Stories is a blog series in which entrepreneurs from a refugee or migrant background talk about their motivation, their business ideas and share what entrepreneurship means to them. Read their stories, told in their own words.
Hi everyone! My Name is Ekaterina Golubeva and my business idea is to make learning maths more accessible to every student, no matter their language or background.
I am from Russia and I arrived in Switzerland 7 years ago. Since then, I finished high school at the Collège de Genève and I’m currently studying my Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics at the University of Geneva. I love mathematics and most of all I love sharing my passion for it. I would love it if more people understood and appreciated it. My dream is for mathematics to be more accessible to everyone.
I love mathematics and most of all I love sharing my passion for it. My dream is for mathematics to be more accessible to everyone.
The company I aim to launch is a family-business: my father, who used to work as a CEO of financial and industrial companies in Russia, is part of my team. We combined my interest in studying and teaching maths with his management expertise and drive to create a business in Switzerland. That’s how our business idea was born and how the SINGA Factory adventure started.
We found out about SINGA on social media and thought it would be a great opportunity for us both to realize our own passions while contributing to Swiss society by building a startup.
To make learning mathematics more accessible to everyone, we are building a tailored program that provides individual monitoring by a maths tutor in the learner’s mother tongue as well as an interactive digital learning platform. By providing them with an introductory course or regular sessions, depending on their needs and their educational program, this package should better prepare students as they start a new maths curriculum (at high school or university). According to our latest market research, that would concern more than 2,000 students, and that’s only in Geneva.
My own experience made me realize that there are some gaps in the teaching of maths in school programs in Geneva. Students starting a new academic path often encounter difficulties with mathematics because what they learned is not in line with the new program they’re involved in. This situation can lead them to struggle in the first year, resulting in lost motivation and, in some cases, to students dropping out. This is also the case for people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, and people from other educational systems wanting to enter Swiss educational institutions. In those cases, language also becomes a challenge on your way to understanding mathematics.
Mathematics is exciting when understood and it should not be the subject that keeps you from what you want to study nor who you want to become. That’s why we want to create a network of tutors that would prepare them to start their studies or support them in pursuing their academic path in maths. What makes us different is that we propose to give classes both face-to-face and online to our students, with the possibility to study maths with a tutor speaking their mother tongue, and using games developed by us.
Until now in the SINGA Factory, we have learned how to set milestones for our project, how to analyze the market, about the importance of networking and much more. We most importantly came to understand the strength of working together and complementing each other’s weaknesses to move forward.
What we love about the program is the availability of experts and interesting and practical workshops, where we can learn and apply the knowledge to our case. We can also share ideas with other participants, complement each other and work together.
What motivates us to keep going every day is the idea of sharing knowledge and the passion for learning on a larger scale, contributing to society and eventually creating an impact for the students we’ll be supporting.
As a team, this experience is a challenging process that enables us to play an active role in society and learn more about entrepreneurship, and ourselves. For me, my studies and my entrepreneurial adventure is a journey of personal development, where I learn about my abilities every day. Trying something new teaches me to push my limits and to grow as a person.
What motivates us to keep going every day is the idea of sharing knowledge and the passion for learning on a larger scale, contributing to society and eventually creating an impact for the students we’ll be supporting.
Interested in supporting our project? We are currently looking for students who would like to test our first program, teachers who would counsel us on our mathematical content, tutors who would like to join our team, an IT team to support us with a website and the gamification part as well as any advice for our project!
Contact:
Ekaterina Golubeva: golubevakatusha@gmail.com
Dmitry Golubev: avantage@bluewin.ch
The pictures in this article were taken by Nadia Franzoni, a freelance photographer based in Geneva.
Although she was interested in photography from an early age, Nadia only acquired her first camera at the age of 20. Strongly passionate about the “other”, she naturally oriented this passion towards portraits.
Pursuing a career in the field of human rights and humanitarian work, she plans to link her two passions very soon by engaging in humanitarian reporting. See more of her work on her website.
