At the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis more than 2 million children were out-of-school, so Norad launched a call for innovation to help them learn to read autonomously on their family phone with no need of an internet connection and Antura and the Letters won it. On a global scale, only 61% of refugee children attend primary school, often learning in a language they do not master.
Antura and the Letters is an engaging mobile game that helps refugee children learn how to read in their mother language and improve their psychosocial well-being... and it has already demonstrated its positive impact in an independent test in Azraq refugee camp in Jordan (https://www.antura.org/impact).
The game has more than 300.000 downloads with very positive ratings from the players. The cost of acquisition is very low: in areas with high density of refugees we get 1 download (= 1 family, up to 5 children can play on a single device) with just €0.20 invested in digital ads.
Moreover, the game is completely free, open source, it does not require an internet connection and it has been designed in order to be easily adapted to any language!
We are currently focusing on 3 main refugee crises, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and also helping the kids to integrate in a new country by learning the local language.
The priority over the last year has been in adapting the game to help Afghan and Ukrainian children (securing the funding and then developing the needed game content). We are about to launch a new version of the game and we will run a digital campaign to promote it during the summer. Thanks to the work of the last few months, one single App now offers both basic literacy and an introduction to a variety of foreign languages!
The priority for the coming months will be to reach as many Afghan and Ukrainian families as possible, but in the next 3 years we have the goal to help 1 million children to learn in their mother language all around the world. That’s why we always look for new international and local partners: we believe we can offer basic literacy for as little as €1 per child!
Antura and the Letters is available for free on App Store and Google Play (links available at https://www.antura.org), so you simply download it on your mobile phone (or tablet) and you can start playing straight away!
The project is open source and available here: https://github.com/vgwb/Antura.
