The Age of Learning Foundation works in partnership with governments and NGOs—including UNICEF and UNESCO as a member of their Global Education Coalition—to provide highly scalable, sustainable digital learning programs proven to measurably advance academic skills, at no cost to the children and families being served. The Foundation also provides teacher training, family engagement, and community outreach support.

Zamchiya brings to his new role more than two decades of experience leading organizations and teams in global development and education. Most recently, he was Managing Director of the Luminos Fund, an international NGO helping out-of-school children in low-income countries catch up academically and enter formal schooling. Zamchiya co-led strategy and partnerships with governments, donors, and grant makers, scaling the organization’s reach and impact severalfold over four years. Prior to that, Zamchiya served as Senior VP of Partnerships at Ashoka and as CEO of the Albany Charter School Network. In 2000, Zamchiya founded The BOOST Fellowship in Zimbabwe, which has helped thousands of students successfully transition from the classroom to the workplace as leaders and innovators.

Zamchiya began his career in strategy and business development roles at the International Finance Corporation, AES Corporation, and Barclays. He is an Echoing Green Fellow, a Pahara Fellow, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and has authored several children’s books. He earned his undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Bristol, and an MPhil in Development Studies from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

“Hundreds of millions of children throughout the world are educationally underserved. Our goal with the Foundation is to mitigate this crisis by making Age of Learning’s proven learning solutions available to this enormous population of children in need,” said Doug Dohring, Founder and Executive Chairman of Age of Learning and Chairman of the Age of Learning Foundation. “Mubuso’s leadership and experience in creating global education partnerships, along with his passion for our mission and the potential to help hundreds of millions of families, gives me every confidence in his ability to rapidly accelerate our growth going forward.”

“Age of Learning has pioneered a highly effective approach to educating young learners at scale by harnessing learning science, putting children and the joy of learning at the center of product development, and maintaining a deep commitment to educational efficacy,” said Mubuso Zamchiya, Managing Director of the Age of Learning Foundation. “At a time when digital learning is more central to addressing the global education challenge than ever before, I could not be more excited to join the Age of Learning Foundation. I look forward to working with partners around the world to bring quality digital learning to children everywhere.”

To date, the Age of Learning Foundation has provided educational ABCmouse programming reaching millions of children through broadcast networks in Kenya, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. In addition, through a partnership with the Ministry of Public Education in Costa Rica, the Foundation has made available the ABCmouse Aprende Inglés program for English language learnings to families throughout the country. Under Zamchiya’s leadership, programs will expand to serve more countries and families, with an initial focus in Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.

About the Age of Learning Foundation

The Age of Learning Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to fundamentally improving the education of underserved children on a global scale. The Foundation works with governments and NGOs—including UNICEF and UNESCO as a member of their Global Education Coalition—to provide highly scalable, sustainable digital learning programs that have been proven to measurably advance academic skills, at no cost to the children and families being served. The Foundation also provides teacher training, family engagement, and community outreach support. Working collaboratively with partners such as UNICEF, UNESCO, Save the Children, United Way, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, General Motors Foundation, ministries of education, and other organizations, the Foundation has enabled children on five continents to benefit from Age of Learning’s research-proven learning resources.

About Age of Learning, Inc.

Age of Learning^®, is a leading education technology innovator, creating engaging and effective learning resources to help children build a strong foundation for academic success. Based in Los Angeles, the company is Bringing Learning to Life^® by blending educational expertise, innovative technology, and insightful creativity. Age of Learning’s flagship product in the U.S., ABCmouse.com^® Early Learning Academy, is a comprehensive curriculum for preschool through second grade, available on all major digital platforms and used by tens of millions of children to date. In 2016 the company launched ABCmouse English to teach English to children internationally, and in 2019 Adventure Academy^®, the first AAA educational massively multiplayer online game (MMO), serving elementary- and middle-school-aged children with thousands of learning activities in a fun and safe virtual world. 2020 saw the release of My Math Academy^® for schools, an adaptive, personalized program that helps students master foundational math concepts; My Reading Academy is scheduled for release in 2022. Connect with Age of Learning at www.AgeofLearning.com or on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

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 Starting today, all Costa Rican families will enjoy free access to ABCmouse Aprende Inglés, a comprehensive digital English language learning program for children ages 3 – 11. Available on computers, tablets, and smartphones, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés was created by Age of Learning and is being offered at no cost throughout Costa Rica by the company’s philanthropic Age of Learning Foundation led by Chairman Doug Dohring. Aligned to international language learning standards, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés is designed specifically to help Spanish-speaking children learn to speak English fluently and confidently and support their important journey to becoming bilingual at an early age. Its engaging, game-based language learning activities makes learning English fun for kids.

In Costa Rica, the ABCmouse Aprende Inglés app is endorsed by the Ministry of Public Education as a valued complement to the English classes received by students in their schools.

Offering more than 4,000 English learning activities expertly designed to teach and practice the language, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés also helps children build confidence in understanding and speaking English as they independently progress along the Step-by-Step Learning Path. While the program is easy for children to use on their own, parents are encouraged to accompany their children in the English learning process and, at the same time, have fun and learn together.

“Everyone at Age of Learning is very excited to be offering ABCmouse Aprende Inglés to all families in Costa Rica at no cost—it’s the first time we’ve made  our English  language learning program available for free in Central America. We want to give Costa Rican children the life-changing  opportunity to become fluent in English from an early age, so they can expand their opportunities as they grow,” says Dr. Rebecca Palacios, a U.S. Hall of Fame teacher with more than 30 years of experience, an expert in dual-language learning, and the spokesperson for  ABCmouse Aprende Inglés.  “We are hoping to reach as many children and their families as possible throughout the country.”

Anyone in Costa Rica interested in taking advantage of this free offer can simply go to www.ABCmouseAprendeIngles.cr  to download the program or open the App  Store on their Android or iOS device, search for the ABCmouse Aprende Inglés app, and download it for free on their mobile devices.

According to Manuel Rojas, advisor to the academic office and coordinator of the Alliance for Bilingualism at MEP, it is extremely important that students have digital resources adaptable to the interests of the student body.

“With the recent approval of the Educational Policy for the Promotion of Languages, guidelines are included that enhance technology as a tool in the language learning process. Based on real content and fun activities with pedagogical intentions, the student population strengthens reading, speaking or listening inside or outside the classroom; with the purpose of expanding exposure to the language and strengthening the entire language learning process,” Rojas says.

Costa Rican families can also visit the program’s new Facebook and Instagram pages for additional information about the app, helpful tips, complementary language learning activities, and much more. On Facebook, go to ABCmouse Ingles Centroamerica.

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Our philanthropic arm—the Age of Learning Foundation, led by Foundation Chairman Doug Dohring—is dedicated to fundamentally improving the education of children around the world. Partnering with governments and non-governmental organizations including Unicef, UNESCO, and Save the Children, the foundation works to support families and educators in helping underserved children improve academic skills through its digital learning programs.

The latest collaboration supports education excellence and the development of the educational system in Sri Lanka, partnering with business leader Dhammika Perera and his new philanthropic initiative, DP Kids.

The project is an extension to Dhammika’s other groundbreaking venture, DP Education, an innovative free online learning platform for school students to enhance their Math and English skills. The partnership will work to ensure an increased amount of children in Sri Lanka will receive a preschool education by providing families free access to ABCmouse as well as hosting its educational video content on DP Kids platforms.

A spokesperson for DP Foundation said, “A child’s early years are the foundation for his or her future development, providing a strong base for lifelong learning and learning abilities, including cognitive and social development. Well-established research continues to emphasize the importance of early childhood education as an essential building block of a child’s future success. With this thought we hope that children from different backgrounds in Sri Lanka will be able to access world class resources in a safe and secure online educational environment cost-free.”

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We are proud to announce the creation of the Age of Learning Foundation, a charitable organization committed to helping children furthest from opportunity build a strong academic foundation by providing access to research-proven educational programs at no cost. Doug Dohring, Executive Chairman of Age of Learning, and Chairman of the Age of Learning Foundation, made the announcement at the Education World Forum in London this week, in an address to Ministers of Education of more than half of the countries of the world, representing nearly one billion children. The Foundation pledged to support up to five partner nations in 2020. The Foundation will provide free access to Age of Learning’s research-proven mathematics and English language learning programs, including our flagship product ABCmouse. ABCmouse has helped educate more than 20 million children to date, and 20 research studies—including multiple randomized controlled trials—have shown that it significantly improves early literacy and math skills. Additionally, the Foundation will offer Age of Learning’s world-class digital library with thousands of high-value books in English, with the opportunity to include local, culturally appropriate titles in partner nations’ native languages. Age of Learning has also developed a patented personalized, adaptive digital learning system that powers its programs with AI-driven technology. Working collaboratively with partners, the Age of Learning Foundation will provide these programs to all children across a country or province, enabling an individualized learning experience for each child. The Age of Learning Foundation will also deliver training and support expertise to facilitate implementation. It asks partners only to ensure the availability of basic technology infrastructure, commit to successful broad-scale implementation, and maintain minimum student usage levels. Interested nations and organizations can apply to be a partner at AofLfoundation.org. “According to UNESCO, more than 600 million children are not achieving minimum proficiency in reading and math, and a majority of those children are actually in school,” said Doug Dohring, Chairman of the Age of Learning Foundation. “The Age of Learning Foundation will help address this global crisis by providing highly engaging, highly effective digital education on a broad scale.” Age of Learning has long been committed to helping educate children whose families cannot afford high quality early learning resources, including through the company’s Bring Learning to All initiative. Within months of launching ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy for families in late 2010, Age of Learning began making ABCmouse available at no cost through classrooms, and later in public libraries, public housing authorities, and other community institutions. To date, these initiatives have helped educate more than 7 million children, with in kind contributions of software and services from Age of Learning exceeding $150 million in value. The Foundation will expand on this work, helping many more children build critical academic skills, and engaging their families and communities to better support them.

“The Age of Learning Foundation marks the next chapter in our ongoing commitment to help children everywhere build a strong foundation for academic success,” said Paul Candland, CEO of Age of Learning. “Our team at Age of Learning has an immense passion for helping children in all communities flourish. Doug will help bring that passion to serve families worldwide as Chairman of this new Foundation.” The Age of Learning Foundation will manage existing Bring Learning to All deployments as well as develop new partnerships with countries around the world. To date, partnerships with UNESCO, Save the Children, United Way, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, General Motors Foundation, and other organizations have enabled children on 5 continents to benefit from high-quality early learning. For additional information, visit www.AofLfoundation.org.

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