Universal access to education is NOT a reality in 2017. Our conventional educational systems will also not solve this problem. The educational space is ripe for disruption. We want a method that allows everyone (with access to technology, such as a mobile phone), to have primary education in a fun and appealing way.

Today if someone want to change from one are to another, has to go thought a University system to get a new diploma or degree. We are looking for a method, using for example online learning from the TOP universities in the world, such as MIT, or Harvard, which rapidly allows someone to gain new skills and get a new University degree, quickly, with a cost under one thousand dollars.

The UNIVERSAL BASIC EDUCATION WORLDPRIZE is a competition for teams to develop software for mobile devices that result in the a system which provides universal basic education for everyone on the planet. Million of adults in the most developed countries on earth (including Europe and the USA) still do not have basic education skills. The benefits of a proper basic education (reading and basic mathematical skills) are extremely important, and are highly related with improvements in personal health, economic security, and increased social and civic participation. Million of children around the world cannot read, write or have elementary arithmetic skills. Many of these children live in developing countries and do not have regular access to quality schools or teachers. In fact, UNESCO estimated that the world would need almost two million more teachers globally something which is not viable given the reduced natality rate. While there are programs today to build schools and train teachers, traditional models of education are not able to scale fast enough to meet demand. A radically new strategy is necessary. A strategy that eliminates the current necessity to a large investment in infrastructures and a strategy that do not depend on humans to provide education, the solution has to be scalable and has to provide anyone on the globe access to it, regardless of its location of social and economic status.

The current world’s workforce has significant skills gap for success in the workplace. those skills include capacity for human-to-human communication, good teamwork skills, collaboration, adaptability, conflict resolution, problem solving, and critical thinking. Schools do not provide proper training on theses skills and students leave universities without have proper skills at this level. Current developed countries universities are not forming students with theses skills for the workplace. The lack of “transversal skills” for the workplace among developed workers is a Challenge that must be addressed.

Governments in developing countries are using the hundreds of years approach to education, namely to build schools and train qualified teachers. We believe this is not going to solve the problem of education in developing countries. We believe that technology might hold the solution to provide education to all the children living in developing countries. A technology based solution will be scalable, and have an extremely low cost of delivery of learning devices. With he efforts of the largest companies of the world, like facebook, google, or amazon, to provide global free access to internet. We believe that a technology-based strategy will be the appropriated solution for solving education.

Artificial Intelligente will have a tremendous impact on Education. We are looking for an AI-based system which will use the interface of a human-looking character, or of Marvel-super heroes, which will engage students to learn the basic elementary education, in a fun, gammification is expected to play a role in the process.