A New Era for Learning Equality: Announcing Exciting Changes

Learning Equality is ushering a new era of innovation and impact. This incredibly exciting inflection point includes a new co-leadership structure, a rebranded look & feel, and new additions to our Kolibri ecosystem of products. Over the next few days, we will delve further into each of these updates, offering more details and additional context.

For now, here’s a teaser of what’s to come…

Last year marked a momentous ten years of Learning Equality. We started from humble beginnings but big aspirations. And with an unwavering commitment to equity, we grew into a leading movement in the offline edtech space.

From the outset, Learning Equality has been driven by community and collaboration. Our success stems from a great team, and the steadfast support of individuals, implementing organizations, educators, philanthropists, governments, bi-lateral agencies, open source technologists, academics, and corporations. United by a shared mission to advance learning globally, we have worked together to build equity in education, ensuring that those living at the margins of Internet connectivity have open access to quality edtech tools and materials that truly meet teaching and learning needs. But the work is far from done — quite the contrary.

With 2.6 billion people still disconnected, we know our responsibility and the positive impact collaborative work can have. And that is why even after eleven years, we still feel energized to continue as if we were just getting started.

We are clear on who we are as an organization, our position in the world, our values, and our model. We find ourselves at an incredibly exciting inflection point, and are making some changes to reflect this as we launch into a next era of innovation and impact for Learning Equality.

New Beginnings: Shared Leadership, Brand Evolution, and Product Expansion

Building on more than a decade worth of momentum, we are thrilled to announce some significant changes to our organization:

Transitioning towards a Co-Leadership Model:

As an organization that already has a distributed leadership structure, we have a practice of recognizing, celebrating, and cultivating leaders from within our team while also sharing power. Building on this and on our foundation of community-centric work and racial equity practices, we are proud to move towards a shared leadership model with Co-Executive Directors. This is part of an ongoing evolution towards leadership that is more proximate to the communities we serve. This move signals our evolution from founder-led to non-founder-led, and our commitment to practices that are deeply aligned with our mission, and to education beyond the technology.

Unveiling a New Brand Identity:

We’re introducing an updated look and feel for Learning Equality and Kolibri. Contemporary and more cohesive, this new branding system better reflects our values and elevates our visual identity to match the quality and scope of our work. We’re also launching a new website, and will be building upon it over the next few months.

Expanding the Kolibri Ecosystem of Tools:

Fostering student-centered, equitable learning is at the core of our work. As we continue to develop Kolibri to give learners and educators agency over their learning, we’re happy to announce the arrival of the new Kolibri: ‘The Android App’ release. This version sees the new brand applied throughout the entire ecosystem of Kolibri products, the Kolibri Android App available on an open testing track at the Play Store, and brings series of new features and improvements carefully designed to give learners, coaches and administrators more autonomy, and an enhanced teaching and learning experience. All details will be shared in an upcoming announcement this week.

Doubling Down on Our Values

We’re entering this new phase with heightened zeal and determination, eager for the opportunities the next decade will present. As we embrace these changes, it is essential to underscore that our values and commitment to equity, to building community, a great team, and most importantly, to ensuring education knows no boundaries remain intact. And so does our innovative spirit.

Looking Ahead

The road ahead is filled with opportunities to deepen our impact and extend our reach:

• We’ll continue to spearhead the movement of equitable AI-powered edtech — a work you can take part in and learn more about.
• We’re continuing to test and improve our tool to automate the process of curriculum alignment using generative AI and machine learning with humans in the loop. We’re working towards making it available as a public good to allow anyone to more readily organize digital content to various national curricular standards.
• We’re further developing and implementing our tech-enabled, offline project-based learning curriculum and toolkit, and much more.

We thank you for being part of our journey and invite you to join us in this exciting new phase by testing out the latest version of Kolibri, learning about why co-leadership works for Learning Equality, and experiencing our new brand.

Here’s to a bright new era of collaboration and impact. Together, we will continue to break barriers, ensuring that quality education is accessible to all, no matter where they are in the world.

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Supporting Our Work

Here are the many ways you can support Learning Equality:

• Donate! No amount is too small. Every little bit can help us ensure underserved learners and educators are receiving the educational opportunities they deserve.
• Speak more than one language? Help us localize our tools! Email us at i18nteam@learningequality.org to learn how.
• See a bug? Don’t hesitate to file an issue on GitHub or send us feedback via the Community Forum.
• Ready to start using Kolibri? Download the latest version here.
• Already using Kolibri? Share your story with us via the Community Forum or send us an email at info@learningequality.org.

You can also watch #KolibriFly on Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and stay in the loop with our work by subscribing for monthly updates here.