HomeGrown

HomeGrown is a parent–school engagement platform built for Nigerian schools. It gives parents attendance updates, small-step fee payments, PTA voting and a direct line to teachers, and gives schools a simple way to run all of that.

Tagline: every Nigerian parent deserves a seat at the school table.

I built and presented it as a Product Manager in the NextGen Teesas Cohort. It placed 2nd out of more than 100 builders.

Many Nigerian parents cannot keep up with their children's school life. They can't easily see attendance or progress, PTA meetings cost time and travel, and school fees arrive as one big bill. Many parents use feature phones or share a phone with other people.

Schools feel the same gap from the other side: attendance is tracked by hand, parents are barely involved, and fee collection is unpredictable.

The result is late detection. By the time a school notices a child is at risk of dropping out, the problem is already deep.

Nigeria has over 40 million students, over 20 million parents and more than 200,000 schools.

Most school software assumes a smartphone and steady internet. HomeGrown fills that gap with low-data tools that also work on 2G and on feature phones.

Parents: see attendance, pay fees in small amounts, message teachers, vote in PTA, get learning resources.

Teachers: enter attendance fast, message parents, check performance, get alerts on students at risk.

School admins: track attendance, monitor fees, see parent engagement and understand adoption.

I started from the phone, not the feature. If a parent shares a device or uses a feature phone, then any feature that only lives in an app is invisible to them. So every core action needed a second route.

That single decision shaped the rest: USSD for feature phones, Neighbor Mode for shared devices, translation for parents who don't read English comfortably, and offline-friendly screens for weak networks.

Then I asked what would actually change a child's outcome. Not more dashboards — earlier signals. That became the AI Child Success Score, and fee pressure became Kolo Savings instead of one large payment.

Separate dashboards for parents, teachers and admins.

USSD access for feature phones, so no parent is locked out.

Kolo Savings: pay school fees gradually instead of one lump sum.

Remote PTA voting, so parents take part without travelling.

AI Child Success Score to flag students at risk early.

Neighbor Mode for safe login on shared devices.

YouTube Learning Hub and automatic Nigerian language translation.

School registration and student profiles. Parent, teacher and admin dashboards. Attendance notifications.

Kolo Savings and fee payments. PTA voting. Messaging and announcements.

USSD access, Neighbor Mode, AI Child Success Score, multilingual interface and YouTube learning integration.

An AI chat assistant for instant help, translation for every parent, feature-phone and low-data support, fees paid in small amounts, safe shared-device login, and curated learning videos.

Plain language, high contrast, shallow navigation, mobile-first. I designed the flows and screens so the main action on every screen is obvious in one look.

Parents: 60% sign-up in pilot schools, 50% weekly login, attendance updates delivered on time.

Teachers: 80% active on dashboards, attendance entered on schedule, regular messages to parents.

Schools: 70% onboarded successfully, attendance covering 80% of students, 65% fee compliance through Kolo Savings.

Participation and learning: 50% PTA vote turnout, and at-risk students flagged by the AI score getting recommended learning resources.

MVP: Kolo fees, sponsored learning content and YouTube ads.

Later: premium dashboards, courses, AI tools, a school marketplace and learning products.

School marketplace and scholarships, national attendance analytics, digital student records, a HomeGrown Wallet, offline homework and lessons, government subsidy support, and more AI tools for parents, teachers and admins.

HomeGrown placed 2nd out of more than 100 builders in the NextGen Teesas Cohort.

I shipped a one-page MRD, the MVP scope, user flows, the prototype, the pitch deck and a live demo.

Designing for constraint produces clearer products. The feature phone forced better decisions than the smartphone did.

A sharp vision line keeps scope honest when time is short.

Money is a product problem. Splitting one big fee into small savings does more for access than any new screen.