K2Step

Entering retirement, Iqbal Chaudhry accompanied by his son Amjad, went on a 12-country tour between October 2017 and March 2018. During this trip the two brainstormed on future projects that would have a positive impact on society after witnessing both sides of the economic scale; from great affluence in parts of Europe to severe poverty in parts of Pakistan.

Iqbal himself left Pakistan in 1981 thanks to an academic scholarship to pursue his PhD in the United States. As a former university professor, Iqbal felt strongly that education was the key to uplifting communities out of poverty. Amjad too was inspired by the latest trends in education, particularly the work of Salman Khan and his non-profit organization Khan Academy.

Traditional education system is failing students, especially in Pakistan due to lack of qualified teachers. Education technology can help teachers improve their lesson plans and help students learn better. Using Learning Management System (LMS) and high-quality interactive lessons, every child in Pakistan can have access to quality education. Iqbal and Amjad would decide over the course of their tour to work towards providing quality education to underprivileged children using technology in the classroom. During the course of the next several months they evaluated different Learning Management Systems (LMS) and devices that could be used in Pakistan with minimum cost. It was decided to use Kolibri, as this is a free LMS which is developed and supported by a nonprofit organization in the USA. Kolibri is used as a local Server to deliver educational lessons to students in school without internet service. STEP has provided several such local Servers to six schools in Pakistan.

In 2020 STEP was formally established and registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Iqbal involved his 4 sons to build up and maintain the organization. Ahmad helped register the nonprofit and establish the business accounts. Asad created and continues to maintain our website. Ali played a key role in defining the backend server/cloud operations used for Kolibri. The Chaudhry family all have engineering backgrounds and have instilled a spirit of self-reliance within the organization. They work as unpaid volunteers to operate the nonprofit without any overhead cost.