Executive Summary

Project Host:

Project Host: Arukay

Fellows:

Laura Di Giunta, Research Fellow
Natalia Kucirkova, Team Lead, Research Fellow
Patricia Lockwood, Research Fellow
Jazib Zahir, Social Entrepreneur Fellow

Introduction 

Arukay is an EdTech company dedicated to equipping students in Latin America with essential digital skills, computational thinking, and coding expertise to prepare them for the demands of a technology-driven world. By integrating digital literacy into K-12 education, Arukay aims to break cycles of poverty and create opportunities for future generations. For over a decade, Arukay, as a growing organization has impacted over 100,000 students across multiple Latin American countries, Arukay seeks to strengthen the evidence base of its educational model through a LEAP Project with MIT Solve.

Organisation’s role & strength

Arukay operates as a for-profit EdTech company with a mission to transform education by making digital literacy accessible to students, regardless of socioeconomic background. The organization is led by CEO and co-founder Vicky Ricaurte, whose expertise in management and educational technology positions the company as a leader in the field. The team includes specialists in curriculum development, platform engineering, finance, and commercial outreach, ensuring cross-functional collaboration and strong implementation capabilities. Arukay’s success is driven by its structured and dynamic instructional design, robust teacher training programs, and advanced data analytics for learning assessment.

Need summary

Latin America faces a critical digital skills gap, with only 17% of students advancing to higher education and a slow intergenerational economic progression. The lack of systematic, early digital education exacerbates social inequalities and limits economic mobility. Arukay seeks to address this challenge by integrating coding and computational thinking into primary and secondary education. However, to maximize impact, the organization requires a stronger evidence base to validate its effectiveness, refine assessment methodologies, and develop scalable measurement frameworks.

Solution summary & next steps

• High-Quality Curriculum: Age-appropriate, multilingual digital literacy courses.

• Teacher Training & Support: Equipping educators with the necessary tools to integrate computational thinking into their classrooms.

• Advanced Reporting & Analytics: Providing real-time insights into student progress.

The next steps include leveraging the LEAP Project to:

1. Improve the design of formative and summative assessments.

2. Enhance data collection methodologies for measuring soft and hard skill acquisition.

3. Develop a long-term framework to track computational thinking skills across primary and elementary education.