Animi is the first app dedicated to improving alexithymia and emotional awareness (explanation of alexithymia is in the next question, in short it is a lack of emotional awareness and intelligence). So you can imagine Animi as Duolingo for emotions. More concretely and currently, Animi is helping people identify and label their granular emotions (not just moods) in a logical way they understand, and will also guide them through regulating and communicating them. It's based on research showing this over time increases emotional awareness and decreases alexithymia score, which is a measure from existing validated psychological questionnaire that's available in the app to track progress. This makes our impact measurable. The long-term vision is to build a crowdsourced engine for emotional learning & development leading people to understand and get in control of their emotional life, and in turn develop deeper emotionally rich relationships.

Animi

Czech Republic

Boleslav Kerouš

Baldies is an animated series for children with cancer and their loved ones. Why do I lose hair? Why can’t I go to school with your friends every day? And what even is this tumor? These are no simple questions and thanks to this series the kids will get the answers. We are going to take them for 13 visits in a happy beetle car, during which they’ll find out a lot of interesting information and they’ll understand what each test does and aims to find out, what to eat during treatment and what to do for fun, what does white and red blood cell do, what is an ultrasound. Thanks to that they’ll be bold baldies! In addition, we are also developing an app that will help young patients gather the information needed for their treatment. How much they drink every day, if they've been sick, etc. The app will also give them tips for exercise or recipes for cooking.

BALDIES

Czech Republic

Eliska Podzimkova

Dreami is a beautiful platform that closes the gap to youth career development by powering mentorship-driven educational and workforce programs for Educational, Non-profit, Government organizations.

Dreami

United States

Ashima Sharma

EduBeyond is building an adaptive learning interface that accelerates the learning process in areas of English and technological literacy for youths in developing regions. Currently, the project aims to halve the required hours for Southeast Asian youths to reach working proficiency in English (B2, according to CEFR). The interface will be a centralized location for students to access expert-curated curricula and AI-based learning tools. EduBeyond will be able to be incorporated into any existing classroom, which makes it scaleable beyond borders and restrictions of internally hiring teachers. The learning interface will be accessible as a mobile and web app, with different applications for students and teachers. Teachers will access features such as generated assessments using large language models and automatic marking using optical character recognition. EduBeyond also offers class administrators the option of giving stealth exams as an alternative to elicit more authentic learning results. For students, the adaptive interface is catered around the concept of gamification to maximize information retention and learning efficiency. Gamification is seen through app features like our personalized question recommendation system built on individual learning results and classroom inputs. Students can also experience a more interactive digital experience through the aid of our AI chatbot for language acquisition. To establish reliable impact metrics, EduBeyond will conduct random controlled trials to investigate the impact of the adaptive learning interface and identify areas needing optimization.

EduBeyond

Canada

Alec Shi

Digital Students is an International Virtual Training Academy. We are a space created to democratize access to knowledge by offering a quality education that is accessible, universal and, mainly, mediated by technology. Our axis is SDG 4 of the UN 2030 Agenda. Currently, we provide education to more than 12,000 students from 14 countries around the world. What we offer? Through our course management software, we offer free synchronous group classes mediated by technology, from different academic disciplines of human knowledge, as well as specialized trainings / synchronous group courses rented at low cost, certified. With this, we offer accompaniment throughout the educational trajectory with the student welfare area (psychologists and psychopedagogues area) and also different channels of communication with classmates/teachers to generate a comprehensive support network for the student. Our idea is that anyone can access quality education, free or at low cost, to overcome all existing access barriers (distance, economy, age, and access problems in general).

Estudiantes Digitales (digital students)

Argentina

Federica Morici

We started the “Feeling good” project two years ago with the mission to educate students on proper mental health care, destigmatise the public’s view on topics related to mental illnesses and thus support public discussion about this issue. Our target group is pupils and students between the ages of 14–26, whom we reach out to during educational workshops and webinars. We also apply gamification on social media, websites and podcasts to target such generation. Loono creates simple designs for a better understanding of medical topics. The goal is to encourage them to care for their mental health and destigmatise mental illnesses. Layman’s comprehensible and positive communication breaks taboos and provides a safe space to discuss related matters.

Feeling good

Czech Republic

Aneta Hlavatá

We provide mobile educational application for children with visual, hearing and intellectual disabilities. The app is called Havasar (Equal) anc contains accessible video and audio lessons. It is designed universally, so can be used by everyone, whoever needs it. Beside accessible forms of school lessons Havasar also contains other kind of educational content. There are also animated talking characters in the app, intended for making the journey within the app more joyfull and easy for children.

Havasar educational startup

Armenia

Mher Baghdasaryan

Inside is an early-stage healthcare platform that provides virtual reality therapy services to its patients. We would introduce VR exposure therapy (VRET) in South Asia to treat major symptoms among mental health patients in different hospitals and healthcare centers. These features would allow the patients to immerse into a simulated environment specific to the patient’s requirements e.g. enabling phobia-inflicted users to confront their most feared situations or creating a hypotonic state needed for meditations. We are also developing the necessary virtual content materials as well as the first interactive human library to accompany our principal hardware. Additionally, we are offering our video materials through our social media programs to initially target over 01 million students and include artificially enhanced chatbots to connect attendees with professional counselors, with the aim of educating them to seek mental healthcare with efficiency.

Inside

Bangladesh

Farhin Ahmed

Kwame AI is an AI platform that enables EdTechs and schools to offer AI-powered instant educational question answering to their students based on their own content or our well-curated content. We make it as simple as ABC: A) create a subject by uploading custom educational content in various formats (html, docs) on our web app, B) our platform automatically creates a custom Kwame (question answering AI) for the subject, C) make API calls with questions from students, get instant answers, and then display to your students on your own platform. Education-relevant analytics are available (e.g., topics and types of questions being asked). For EdTechs and schools that don’t have their own forum-like platform yet for question answering, they can invite their students to their subject on our mobile-friendly web app where their students can ask questions and get answers.

Kwame AI

Ghana

George Boateng

As Asian students, we’ve long tolerated the traditional education experience. Route learning, Disorientation, Societal Pressure, we have been through it all. The long-term consequence is that students become dependent on extrinsic factors (social or parental pressure) and lose sight of what they truly enjoy studying. Introducing: LEAN Platform - an online study ecosystem where students can livestream their learning sessions solo or with others and earn tokens for their study time. These tokens can be used to redeem rewards from entertainment brands (fun) or youth education organisations (growth). LEAN incentivizes students’ learning with rewards by brands that can post for free to attract customers. We address the missing link between what students like and the learning journey. Furthermore, we connect with educational institutions to provide growth rewards that foster self-directed learning. The LEAN Platform has 2 main features: Learn (time) to Earn Detection: a camera records the students’ learning behaviours and rewards them with tokens for their study time. Students also benefit from peer accountability when having others observe their study session Community Learning Feature: students can post whatever academic questions they struggle with. Students who provide correct answers and are upvoted by other students will also earn tokens for their contribution. Our learn-to-earn platform impacts the whole learning journey, making it not just fun but an entirely more productive experience. We aim to revolutionise the way students view studying, cultivating intrinsic motivation along the way. LEAN Platform is a team for students, by students. We are students from many prestigious universities, including The University of Hong Kong, SciencesPo, and Fulbright University Vietnam. Because we are fairly young, we can easily relate to the mindset of our target users and come up with solutions that match their needs most. Educational payoffs are not inevitable, but we are here to make it so.

LEAN

China

Fanyin Yang

Maktab is an e-Learning & collaboration app that helps students, mostly girls in Afghanistan, to learn from their homes and have access to updated quality education resources using their mobile phones, tablets, or computers. It's available for both iOS and Android platforms. Maktab is a free product and it already has around 100k users and is growing quickly since the Taliban conquer and school shutdown. We started Maktab with three goals in Afghanistan: 1). to help students have access to quality education and video lectures mostly for the science subjects. 2). help girls belonging to conservative families to have access to education opportunities, learn, and collaborate with others from their homes using their mobile phones. 3). provide different types of awareness to students and their parents improving their knowledge and importance of education. But recently, due to what has happened in Afghanistan, we have revised our goals and currently, our main focus is to provide education for everyone at this time when schools are closed or some important subjects are absent from everyday study plans. We have used recent technologies to build Maktab such as AI and Blockchain and have solutions in hand to help those without the internet, still have access to educational content.

Maktab

Afghanistan

Maryam Monib

Malaika is a grassroots non-profit organization that has developed into an ecosystem dedicated to changing lives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Operating in Kalebuka, a village in southeastern DRC that previously had no access to electricity, clean water, educational facilities, or technology, Malaika created an innovative community partnership to educate girls and provide essential resources for the surrounding community. Through improved access to education and health programs, Malaika is building a model of sustainable community impact and gender equity that can be adapted and replicated globally. Malaika is teaching girls to question and engage and to evolve into progressive leaders who can positively affect their villages, their country, and even their world. It is giving adults a space to reinvent and reimagine their lives, too. Malaika's community-driven model has been integral to its success over the last 15 years since its founding. Through a comprehensive, local approach, an entire village has undergone a transformative ripple effect. And it all starts with education: An educated woman is more likely to give back to her community, to inspire others to attend school, and to cultivate a sense of independence among both her peers and the next generation. The Malaika School provides free, accredited primary and secondary education to 430 girls, ranging from STEM and coding to art, music, theater, and sports. Built partially in partnership with FIFA, the Malaika Community Center offers free literacy and vocational education, technical classes, health classes, and sports programming to 5,000 people in Kalebuka. Wells are built and refurbished, providing a consistent source of safe, clean drinking water to the people of Kalebuka. Organic food is grown locally on Malaika’s farm, helping to provide students and staff with two nutritious meals per day.

Malaika

D.R. Congo

Maguy Safi Makanda

Nekrachni is a non-profit educational organization whose main activity is providing attractive and practice reflecting materials for teaching financial literacy in Czech schools - educational Nekrachni application, worksheets, and methodological materials for pupils and teachers. We are reacting to the alarming situation regarding the decline in the financial literacy of the Czech population (Financial Literacy Index, Czech Bank Association, 2021). We are currently focusing on delivering an application for 8th and 9th-grade elementary school students - here, and the Nekrachni methodology is intended to help grasp the RVP (framework educational plan) more attractively, make interpretation more efficient and offer practical activities for teaching. The Nekrachni team consists of over 20 people, mainly young people or experts who participate in the project's implementation in the form of consultancy - we connect experts from practice with a young team, and together we create solutions tailored to students. The project received the Social Impact Award and funding from the Karel and Liliana Janečkovy foundations, the Vodafone Laboratory, and the Česká spořitelna Foundation.

Nekrachni, z.ú.

Czech Republic

Maria Šimůnková

Peddle ilab is a 21st century mobile and digital class room on a bicycle or motorcycle. This technology affords students from the poorest households, rural and lower income communities to instantly convert already existing space in school or at home into digital classrooms for learning . We believe our solution will positively change lives by granting every student the affordability to learn ICT in all levels and environment.

Peddle ilabs

Nigeria

Okeke Obumneme Vincent

In 2021, about 825 million students globally were affected due to the closure of schools as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic that struck. Over 9.7 million students in Ghana were not exempted. During the pandemic, however, we saw an increase in the use of online learning platforms and video conferencing tools to help continue studies in various institutions. Even Ghana's national television and radio programmes participated by broadcasting educational content. But the majority of hearing-impaired students in Ghana's primary and secondary schools were left to their own fate. In Ghana, there is a significant disparity in access to educational resources tailored to the needs of hearing impaired students (for example, being more engaging and taught in sign language). The goal of our Project ReL is to close the inequality gap for hearing-impaired students in Ghana. Although we've seen a decline in the effects of the pandemic in Ghana, online learning has become a new norm and is here to stay but there is not any online platform that exists for hearing impaired students in Ghana. We are seeking to build an online learning platform that would be a repository for educational and engaging online learning materials all taught in sign language for a subsidized fee. The content on the platform would be tailored to various educational needs and would also provide other skill development content such as programming. To further create a link between people who do not understand sign language and the hearing impaired, the platform would also include paid training modules that would help provide training for people in Ghana to learn the various sign languages (American Sign Language, Ghanaian Sign Language, etc) The long term prospects of the project are sustained through the subsidized fees taken on the platform.

Project ReL

Ghana

David Junior Nintang

Reality University is an ed-tech platform to help people prepare for the coming Metaverse. The platform will offer a suite of consumer facing educational products for creating Extended Reality (XR) apps first and in the long term, other Metaverse technologies like Blockchain and NFT’s. The vision is to build a one-stop shop for anyone wishing to up-skill in Metaverse related technologies. The Metaverse is predicted to be as revolutionary, if not more, than the internet was in the early 90’s. According to a recent report by Citi, it is forecasted to be a $13 trillion dollar economy by 2030. As such, all the ‘big tech’ are investing heavily, with Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta being the most evident example. With such changes underway, there is a growing interest in learning Metaverse related technologies to capitalise on the various career opportunities spawning in this field. According to Google Trends, there was a 938% increase in interest for the search term ‘Metaverse jobs’, in 2022 alone. Despite the growing interest, there is a clear lack of training content available. Of the handful that exists, they are either prohibitively expensive (e.g. $5k+ and $7k+ courses offered by Circuit Stream and New York University, respectively) or are limited to using just one platform. What Reality University aims to do is fill this gap and provide a one-stop shop for up-skilling in all things Metaverse related, at an affordable price range. To date, we have over 76 free educational videos on Youtube, which has obtained over 90k+ views and 1.4k subscribers. Moreover, our first digital product, “The Complete Apple Augmented Reality Course” is in the making, with a January 2023 release date.

Reality University

United Kingdom

Nikhil Kurian Jacob

We are developing an e-learning platform to fill the gap between schools that are well-equipped and those that are not. This platform connects all high school students who are enrolled in the same class and are studying the same academic subjects but attend different schools with varying infrastructure in order to improve academic performance.

SmartClass Ltd

Rwanda

NIYONIZEYE Abdulrahman

We are committed to increasing educational equity by providing students affected by homelessness across the nation with the technical resources and individualized support they need to succeed in online learning, both during and following the pandemic. The rise of remote learning has widened the educational gap as disadvantaged students are at risk of falling behind and dropping out of school altogether. We have taken our first step at bridging the digital divide by giving educational devices and access to educational resources such as tutoring and college-readiness mentorship programs. Now, we are also growing our services to provide free Internet connectivity for these under-resourced students. We have also implemented a device-donation program in which U.S. corporations can donate devices; these high-quality devices are then sustainably refurbished and sent to students residing in our partner shelters. However, we also realize that the scope of the digital divide is far greater than a simple hardware distribution issue. Therefore, we have recently onboarded an Intel Encore Fellow to help us develop a Wi-Fi delivery program so that once children have devices for online-learning, they also have stable, reliable access to the Internet. Determined to equip homeless youth with the same academic support enjoyed by their affluent classmates, we designed a unique tutoring and mentorship program run by passionate students from highly competitive universities such as Stanford and employees from companies such as Salesforce and L’Oréal who have devoted their time to mentoring our students. We train our mentors with resources on college-readiness, confidence-building, and mental health support so that each of our students' needs and concerns can be comprehensively addressed. Based on student testimonials, we have found that close, regular mentorship helped students feel socially connected and experience stress relief during the most acute periods of the pandemic.

The Bridging Tech Charitable Fund

United States

Margot Bellon

We are building a mobile Virtual Reality (VR) Academy to support children with intellectual disability to learn and to sensitize the community members on the rights of persons living with disabilities. Virtual reality (VR) is a user interface immersing a person in a digital 3D environment, instead of watching on a display. This computer-generated imagery and content aim at simulating a real presence through senses (sight, hearing, touch). We specifically intend to develop educational video tutorials for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Dyslexia and create simulations on the challenges that persons with disability go through in their daily lives. The simulations will be used to conduct community sensitization and awareness sessions with community members. This solution is expected to result in improved learning outcomes for learners with disabilities and reduce the discrimination, stigma, and negative attitudes/perceptions that community members have towards persons with disabilities. The Community sensitization program is an income-generating approach for sustainability and the creation of employment to our fellow youth.

Ukhevision VR Academy for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Kenya

Jones Ukhevi

The advent of the metaverse has shown us prospects of a drastic change both in the way we interact with technology and its effect on our day-to-day activities. Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Realities are applicable in different industries such as Education, Health, Entertainment, Military, and even Agriculture. At e-Mentor Africa, we are using Virtual and Mixed Reality to build a device for education in Central and West Africa. Our solution is a stand-alone head-mounted device that creates an immersive environment where students and teachers from remote parts of the region can meet virtually and teach/learn, thereby exchanging relevant skills. This device makes it possible for students and teachers to manipulate and interact with graphic components like images, videos, text, and speech in a 3-Dimensional virtual world. What makes our device stand out is its ability to operate on renewable energy (solar power), and in conditions of low internet bandwidth. Because of this, students in rural settlements with no power and poor internet conditions can still use the platform.

e-Mentor

Cameroon

Abongdoh Maluyane Titus