Ashoka
South Korea Ashoka Fellow a Winner of the $10-Million XPRIZE Award for Child Literacy
Ashoka Fellow Sooinn Lee’s organization Enuma (meaning "enumerate" or "name one by one")’ is one of two organizations sharing the $10 million XPRIZE For Global Learning. Nearly 200 teams from 40 countries entered the competition, jumping at the chance to become the latest winner of an XPRIZE, a coveted international award funded by future-looking entrepreneurs, billionaires, and philanthropists who have banded together with the goal of making the world a better place through technology. Elon Musk announced the winners on May 15. The total XPRIZE For Global Learning, funded by Musk, was worth $15 million, with each of five finalists getting $1 million just for making the final round. The winners additionally receive $5 million each. After a 15-month long field test with more than 3,000 children in remote villages in Tanzania, Enuma’s Kitkit School demonstrated one of the highest learning gains among the finalists. As part of the competition’s rules, Enuma Inc. will open-source all code and content for Kitkit School, allowing anyone to build on the learning software. Kitkit School was created by Enuma, a leader in digital early learning solutions whose flagship product, Todo Math, has been downloaded over 6 million times on iOS and Android. Their team is based in Berkley, CA and Seoul, South Korea, and their solution draws on technology and design from the game industry to lower barriers for struggling users. “Our vision is to create solutions that can empower struggling learners to become independent learners,” said Kitkit School CEO and co-founder Sooinn Lee. “What should the content look like for children who are not motivated to learn? What can we do for a child who is not prepared to learn the curriculum? We believe that our unique approach tackles the hardest problems of education.”
