‘It's been such a gift for me.' Apps help schools and families overcome language barriers

To help preserve important cultural knowledge in the face of genocide, Rohingya Project digitized and designed a font for the Hanifi Rohingya alphabet, which was developed in the 1980s. The script has now been released as a Unicode and is taught to displaced Rohingya around the world in refugee camps, classrooms, Zoom meetings, and WhatsApp groups.

Across Alabama, districts are using summer school breaks as a chance to bridge learning gaps for elementary school students who struggled to adjust to remote schooling or didn’t get as much face time with teachers during the pandemic. In Madison, English-language learning students were able to participate in a summer program to practice their language skills while incorporating field trips and fun activities, like cooking.

Ethnic Azeri students face disproportionate barriers in achieving university education compared to Georgians. One of those reasons is due to language barriers. Isolated from Georgian society, it's not uncommon for Azeri communities to not speak Georgian fluently. The center has now expanded into a network of multiple centers. One center serves as many as 160 children. It’s working. Some of the centers had a 100% success rate in helping Azeri students enter college.

The Dream Center is providing a free schoolroom in Nashville for the children of single parents to stay on track for school. The nonprofit, which is run and staffed by volunteers, provides free meals to 32 students throughout the day, and helps them complete their daily lessons, all while following Covid-19 protocols.

The Twilight Education Club is a non-profit working to break down the barriers – transportation, child care and cost – that typically prevent the economically disadvantaged from accessing social services such as language classes. While the Twilight program is specifically geared toward the needs of the parents - getting better jobs and securing greater stability - the long-term focus remains on creating future opportunities for their children.

The Communities in Schools program (CIS) places trained navigators in low-income schools to provide wraparound social support, helping students and families access public benefits, cover emergency expenses, provide behavioral counseling and address barriers that prevent students from succeeding academically. The non-profit has been helping students for 50 years, serving 2 million children across 26 states, and has seen significant academic and economic outcomes, including increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates.

The Bonnicare Foundation garners support and funding for people in need of education, healthcare and economic empowerment through visual storytelling on social media. This approach helps humanize the challenges people are facing, encouraging those with the means to donate. With the funding they’ve received through social media donations, the Bonnicare Foundation has helped pay the school fees for more than 1,000 primary and secondary school students in rural areas.

Meerah’s Kitchen Utensils & More is a monthly contribution plan helping mothers save the money necessary to provide for their newly married daughters, as is tradition in Nigeria. Women contribute a set fee to the group each month for 10 months, after which they can take whatever they need from the store, including pots, cooking utensils and other necessities. Women contribute by joining a WhatsApp group, and there are currently over 200 members.

Founded to address the root causes of cattle rustling in Nigeria, such as lack of access to education, as well as raise awareness of Fulani culture, the Fulani Care and Support Foundation set up makeshift classrooms to provide formal education for children aged 7 to 12. By relying on volunteer teachers, one of the foundation’s schools offers lessons for about 50 students three times a week.

Flare Initiative provides literacy education for students enrolled in Islamic schools, with lessons on the English alphabet, proper sentence construction, and effective communication skills offered in the evenings to avoid disrupting students’ Qur’anic studies. Participants say the program has given them newfound confidence to pursue future careers that require English language proficiency.