I’m proud to join Vice President Kamala Harris’s Call to Action for American businesses to commit to supporting the people of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. As an immigrant from Guatemala who became an American citizen, I am honored to be called upon to help, and it’s a privilege to be able to contribute.
Today we are announcing a commitment to apply the expertise and resources of Duolingo to three key areas of education in the region: English language teaching, early childhood Spanish literacy, and English language assessment.
Why this matters to me
I grew up in Guatemala City in the 1980s and 1990s, a particularly unsafe time in my country’s history. My mother spent everything she had on my education, which undoubtedly changed my life. I was extremely fortunate to go to a good school and eventually be able to come to the United States for higher education. But I am acutely aware that my outcome is extremely unusual for most people from Guatemala and our neighbors in the Northern Triangle, Honduras and El Salvador.
The disparity in opportunity and outcome between those who can afford education and those who can’t is one of the biggest problems facing our world. Throughout my life I’ve worked to find ways to use technology to solve problems for people. By making education free and accessible to more people through smartphones, I believe we can reduce income inequality over time. Duolingo was created to try to help the people of Guatemala, and all over the world — people for whom free education can completely change their lives.
Duolingo in the Northern Triangle
Around 500,000 people in the Northern Triangle region use Duolingo, mostly to learn English. Learning English can double your income potential, and open up the opportunity to work or study abroad. All of our course content is 100% free to use, and will remain so. That commitment has been part of our mission since the beginning. We believe providing our content for free is not only good for humanity, but it has also helped us become the most downloaded education app in the world. We focus most of our efforts as a company on improving how well we teach, with our current goal of teaching to B2 on the CEFR scale. This is the point at which someone could get a job that requires English, using Duolingo alone.
Learning English opens new doors, but when you come from the developing world, the barriers to pursuing your dreams are enormous. English proficiency tests, like the TOEFL, are one of those barriers. When I was applying to universities in the U.S., I had to go through a lot of hassle just to take an English test. Millions of international students each year go through similar hurdles to have a chance at higher education. We created the Duolingo English Test to bring standardized tests into the modern world, making them available online at low cost. Last year we provided over 10,000 fee waivers to high-achieving, low-income students around the world. As part of the Call to Action, we will expand our fee waiver program in the Northern Triangle to help people access higher education. With over 3,000 institutions currently accepting the Duolingo English Test, the value of this credential will continue to increase as more institutions accept it every year.
Early childhood education lays the foundation for a lifetime of possibilities. Students with low reading levels are more likely to get poor grades, display behavioral problems, or even drop out of school entirely. In the Northern Triangle, many people never even learn how to read or write. Fixing this problem would probably help more than anything else we could possibly do. This is why we are committing to developing Spanish as the next language in Duolingo ABC, our free app designed to teach early childhood literacy to children ages 3-7. With Duolingo ABC, we hope to tackle global illiteracy problems before they even start. Focusing on children is one of the key ways we can reduce the education gap for future generations, giving every family the tools they need to help their children succeed in school and in life.
Let’s get started
The United States gave me the opportunity to receive the best education in the world, and to create a successful and growing business. Duolingo gave me the opportunity to gather a world-class team of the best minds in education and technology. Together I know we can make an even greater impact for the benefit of the people of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Luis von Ahn is the CEO & Co-founder of Duolingo. Follow @luisvonahn on Twitter. Follow @duolingo for more company news and updates.