Help Refugees Learn German/English!
Donation protected
The refugee crisis in Europe, especially in Germany and Turkey, has placed staggering numbers of immigrants into foreign lands. Without basic language skills, foreigners face social isolation and financial roadblocks that lead to setbacks in personal and professional growth, as well as to huge governmental cost burdens.
Photo credit: Flickr - UK Department for International Development
This problem calls for an innovative solution to address a basic human need to communicate via a free, accessible, and contextually-relevant technology platform to teach languages. Speaksli , an animated video platform developed by an immigrant living in Switzerland to teach herself language skills, is the perfect free platform for teaching German, Turkish and English to refugees to help improve their quality of life and help them find jobs to feed themselves and their families.
With 750,000 video views to date, Speaksli combines real-world approaches to learning languages with practical yet entertaining educational content. We make free video content to help learners quickly develop confidence and proficiency in a new language at their own pace. Our aim is to create simple, affordable and accessible technology solutions to reduce the frustration of learning a new language and adjusting to a new culture. Ultimately, we hope to promote international understanding and obviate the development of social conflicts by facilitating language proficiency and communication across cultures.
The money you donate will be used for two specific programs. First, we will localize ~50 core German videos into versions that allow for Arabic-to-German learning since the approximately 1M refugees in Germany do not necessarily speak English. Secondly, these videos will also be localized into an Arabic-to-Turkish version to help the 2.7M refugees living in Turkey.
The core video content is being developed by our founder, who has experience managing the Training and Development department of Dell Europe, working in the communications department of the United States White House, 20 years of experience in high-tech, and a Harvard M.B.A. Our Arabic and Turkish translator and voiceover talent is from Saudi Arabia. She teaches English in Istanbul. The second key team member, a Turkish teacher and our voiceover talent, is also based in Istanbul. We have 2 seasoned business development people who are focused on building relationships with the governments of Germany and Turkey to help get the word out about our free solution.
One of our advisors has a masters in education and behavioral modeling from Harvard University and is working on characterizing the plight of refugees from the perspective of learning a new language. In addition, we have another advisor who is an experienced education consultant who has advised the World Bank and governments in emerging markets. According to him, ""The task of learning a new language can be extremely frustrating and confusing. For language learners, the thought of simply giving up is almost always guaranteed to come during the course of learning a new language. However, for migrants and immigrants who arrive in a new country by choice, chance or out of circumstance, a basic knowledge of the host society’s language and culture is essential in meeting their daily social and economic needs, as well as in helping them achieve successful integration."
The solution you will be funding is for a quick-turn localization project of existing core content, which has been well-received and viewed 750K times already in 196 countries, to include Arabic to help refugees specifically. Later funding projects will include English for refugees in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as new content that will come out of our ongoing curriculum development efforts.
We will be extremely grateful for any support - financial or otherwise - that you can provide. As we begin our outreach to government institutions and aid organizations, it will be helpful if we can present a growing library of content that will directly help alleviate the growing social and cultural integration problems faced by refugees.
Please check out our unique language learning videos at http://youtube.com/speaksli and follow us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/speaksli.
Photo credit: Flickr - UK Department for International Development
This problem calls for an innovative solution to address a basic human need to communicate via a free, accessible, and contextually-relevant technology platform to teach languages. Speaksli , an animated video platform developed by an immigrant living in Switzerland to teach herself language skills, is the perfect free platform for teaching German, Turkish and English to refugees to help improve their quality of life and help them find jobs to feed themselves and their families.
With 750,000 video views to date, Speaksli combines real-world approaches to learning languages with practical yet entertaining educational content. We make free video content to help learners quickly develop confidence and proficiency in a new language at their own pace. Our aim is to create simple, affordable and accessible technology solutions to reduce the frustration of learning a new language and adjusting to a new culture. Ultimately, we hope to promote international understanding and obviate the development of social conflicts by facilitating language proficiency and communication across cultures.
The money you donate will be used for two specific programs. First, we will localize ~50 core German videos into versions that allow for Arabic-to-German learning since the approximately 1M refugees in Germany do not necessarily speak English. Secondly, these videos will also be localized into an Arabic-to-Turkish version to help the 2.7M refugees living in Turkey.
The core video content is being developed by our founder, who has experience managing the Training and Development department of Dell Europe, working in the communications department of the United States White House, 20 years of experience in high-tech, and a Harvard M.B.A. Our Arabic and Turkish translator and voiceover talent is from Saudi Arabia. She teaches English in Istanbul. The second key team member, a Turkish teacher and our voiceover talent, is also based in Istanbul. We have 2 seasoned business development people who are focused on building relationships with the governments of Germany and Turkey to help get the word out about our free solution.
One of our advisors has a masters in education and behavioral modeling from Harvard University and is working on characterizing the plight of refugees from the perspective of learning a new language. In addition, we have another advisor who is an experienced education consultant who has advised the World Bank and governments in emerging markets. According to him, ""The task of learning a new language can be extremely frustrating and confusing. For language learners, the thought of simply giving up is almost always guaranteed to come during the course of learning a new language. However, for migrants and immigrants who arrive in a new country by choice, chance or out of circumstance, a basic knowledge of the host society’s language and culture is essential in meeting their daily social and economic needs, as well as in helping them achieve successful integration."
The solution you will be funding is for a quick-turn localization project of existing core content, which has been well-received and viewed 750K times already in 196 countries, to include Arabic to help refugees specifically. Later funding projects will include English for refugees in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as new content that will come out of our ongoing curriculum development efforts.
We will be extremely grateful for any support - financial or otherwise - that you can provide. As we begin our outreach to government institutions and aid organizations, it will be helpful if we can present a growing library of content that will directly help alleviate the growing social and cultural integration problems faced by refugees.
Please check out our unique language learning videos at http://youtube.com/speaksli and follow us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/speaksli.
Organizer
Elizabeth Clark Cummins
Organizer
Austin, TX
