Elon Musk backs youth literacy

Elon Musk backs youth literacy through the Global Learning XPrize

Proof that when South Africans leave Africa, they don’t forget it.

Elon Musk backs youth literacy

Two South Africans heard about the recently announced Global Learning XPrize, and got to work. This XPrize challenge, funded by Elon Musk (another ex-South African), inspires teams to develop open-sourced technology to teach children who have little access to school how to read, write and do math.

When Nicole Herbstein, a technology adoption expert and an expat living in the USA, heard that the challenge had announced its official language as Swahili, and that the submitted solutions were going to be piloted in African villages, she knew she had to get involved. She called up another South African entrepreneur and four-time SA Open chess champion Mark Levitt, also living in California, for initial financial and advisory support, and together they created an official XPrize team.

They called the team Mbele, a Swahili word meaning ‘Forward’.

The team has partnered with a social enterprise in India called BookBox, who develop powerful animated books using an underlying scientifically tested and proven approach to help improve reading skills and language learning, called Same Language Subtitling (SLS). This approach was pioneered by Dr Brij Kothari, through a challenge at Stanford University, and is now a globally recognized innovation for literacy. Three heads of state have spoken about and valued this innovation! It has also won numerous awards over the years.

Moving literacy for children forward, means a slow edging away from poverty, more access to opportunity,  a more meaningful and productive life, and hopefully forward to provide for their family and become role-models for their communities. Forward to contribute to a more prosperous world for all of us.

For these two South Africans, even though far from home, Mbele, its time to move Forward.