What is the name of your organization?
International Rescue Committee
What is the name of your solution?
aprendWell AI
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
aprendWell AI: Empowering educators in crisis, with educational, and mental health support, to improve outcomes for both teachers and students.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
New York, NY, USA
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
United States
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
—
What specific problem are you solving?
There are 224 million crisis-affected school-aged children globally. Quality teaching is a catalyst for these children, improving learning and social emotional outcomes.
Educators in crisis settings are critically under-trained, under-resourced and under-supported. Furthermore, evidence shows that teacher well-being is strongly linked to instructional quality, positive classroom environments and student outcomes, particularly in crisis settings where educators face chronic stress, secondary trauma, and burnout.
The IRC, with its extensive experience in education, mental health and social emotional well-being is addressing this gap by developing a chatbot that integrates integrated support for teachers. This solution will be first tested in Nigeria where:
Toxic stress is not only prevalent in children but psychological distress prevalence in educators is >69%;
Only 27% of children demonstrate reading comprehension and a staggering 10.5M children are out of school (one in five out-of-school children globally are in Nigeria)
AprendWellAI will improve teacher well-being and quality of teaching as well as child learning and development outcomes in BAY (Borno, Adamawa and Yobe) states, where children and adults face crippling consequences of decades-long political instability, economic inequality and persistent armed conflict. Given IRC’s global reach, our ambition is to build a model to be applied in crisis settings worldwide.
What is your solution?
aprendWell AI is an AI-enabled, multi-channel chatbot designed to support educators in crisis contexts with both educational and mental health support — all in one tool.
What makes it innovative is not just integration of different sector content, but that we’re building a system that can draw from IRC’s extensive bank of field-tested, evidence-based materials (IRC’s >285 studies conducted globally), to offer teachers personalized, context-relevant behaviorally-informed interventions when they need it most — whether that's a classroom activity, student behavior management, or a moment of mental health care in crisis.
Key features of aprendWell AI include leveraging Generative AI (GenAI) and behavioral science to provide teachers with personalized:
- coursework, learning opportunities and classroom activities, such as support for managing challenging classroom scenarios and creating safe, enabling environments for their students. It builds on learnings from IRC’s education bot, aprendIA.
- mental health content, including self-care strategies, de-stigmatizing psycho-education and nudges towards existing mental health-care services. It builds on learnings from IRC’s mental health bot, InforMH.
- Delivered through multi-channel options (eg, WhatsApp) in a low bandwidth format — ensuring reach in fragile contexts.
Using GenAI and behavioral science, aprendwellAI responds to user needs when needed most.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution will be tested in Northeast Nigeria, targeting 365 educators who serve some of the most vulnerable children in the country. The region has the lowest school completion rate in the country and highest need for trained teachers. These educators are essential in providing education as well as stability to students in crisis-affected areas, yet they face significant challenges, including high stress, burnout, and limited access to mental health support, which directly impacts their teaching effectiveness and well-being. They also lack adequate resources, training and support from mentors throughout the year, decreasing their ability to support their students' learning and emotional needs. Children face the consequences, with 8.1 million dropping out every year.
Our solution aims to first improve the learning outcomes and well-being of 14,600 students in Northeast Nigeria (BAY states). Once developed and tested for efficacy, we plan to leverage IRC Nigeria’s 13-year relationship with local and regional government to offer the solution to both formal teachers and non-formal learning facilitators, reaching both in-school children not meeting minimum standards as well as the 2.8M out-of-school children in the BAY states.
