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Curious Learning

Curious Learning is a non-profit putting literacy apps in the hands of children giving them the opportunity to learn to read.

Curious Learning curates, localizes, optimizes & distributes open-source learning apps that provide a path to literacy in 50+ languages regardless of proximity to schools. Curious Learning has more than 10 years of proven impact, harnessing the natural curiosity of a child, together with the neuroscience of how the brain learns to read, and has reached ~3.5 million learners.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2014

Established

1M

Children

120

Countries
Target group
Students early
Updated
November 2023
It is very rare for a literate parent to raise an illiterate child. If a whole generation can become literate, we can inoculate the planet against illiteracy. If we are successful, we will have helped create a world where Curious Learning the organization is no longer needed because everyone has become a curious learner.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Pre-pandemic, 387MM children were not reaching minimum literacy proficiency by the 4th grade. Today, that number has reached 484MM. With 90% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 78% in South Asia, lagging behind grade level reading at age 10, we needed to scale up quickly. Millions of children are on the path to growing into young adults without having mastered fundamental literacy skills.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

In an effort to step in where governments and societies have not, Curious Learning curates, localizes, & distributes local language-specific, open-source, mobile apps that allow anyone to learn to read anywhere in the world. These apps, including the flagship app, Feed the Monster, empower learners through self-guided exploration while teaching them the building blocks of literacy. Furthermore, apps are able to measure literacy skills & provide a more cost-effective assessment than traditional methods, offering a unique opportunity to adapt digital learning tools at scale. In support of this, research done by the World Bank, Unicef, & World Vision have all shown the effectiveness of our digital literacy content and approach.

Our experience with awareness campaigns allows for the targeting of specific geographic locations and demographic groups efficiently and inexpensively. This allows parents anywhere to provide free learning content to their children in support of their education.

How has it been spreading?

Apps - We currently have content in 50+ different languages.

Distribution - We average 100,000 downloads per month. Our complete content suite has surpassed 3.5 million downloads and we have reached all 195 countries in the world. Furthermore, as of 2022 there are 6.567 billion smartphone subscriptions in the world, which indicates a highly enabling environment for digital learning tools.

For example, using a digital marketing approach, we reached 100K Ukrainian learners within 100 days of the invasion starting.

We aim to reach 20 million learners over the next 3 years, and hope you will be part of that journey!

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Spread the word, download the apps, and start sharing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Curious+Learning

One of the best ways to get apps into the hands of children is to inform parents of the available content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbUKg41eYfc

Contact partnerships@curiouslearning.org for more information.

Implementation steps

Awareness
Becomes aware of and interested in the content for learning.
Engagement
Download and continued engagement with content
Graduate
Knows how to read and has developed the self-confidence to continue their life-long learning journey.

Spread of the innovation

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