08 Jan PRESS RELEASE: Pearson funds Cell-Ed and Wizenoze partnership to help low-literate adults worldwide better their lives
Media contact, Cell-Ed: Aisling Carroll
aisling@cell-ed.com, +1 510 334-7887
Media Contact, Wizenoze: Leila Walker
Leila@wizenoze.com +447968800619
Pearson funds Cell-Ed and Wizenoze partnership to help low-literate adults worldwide better their lives
Partnership will bring skills courses and an easier-to-read internet to low-literate adults
PALO ALTO and LONDON, January 8, 2019 — Cell-Ed, a Silicon Valley-based mobile learning solution for low-skilled workers, and Wizenoze, a London/Amsterdam-based solution for a smarter internet for education, today announced a partnership to make it easier and faster for low-literate and low-skilled adults (16+) worldwide to learn basic skills and find relevant and reliable information online that’s matched to their reading level. This partnership is financially supported by the Pearson Project Literacy Lab fund.
The partnership takes aim at both the massive global market of two billion adults who lack basic skills, such as language, literacy, numeracy and job readiness, and at an internet that is written at a reading level too high for most people to comprehend.
Some 75% of online content is not understood by 60% of readers, and 41% of users leave websites because the text is too difficult to read, according to Wizenoze research.
“In order to close the global literacy gap, we need to support innovative problem-solvers whose technologies help boost reading and learning skills. If we are serious about solving this pressing issue of illiteracy, we need to make entrepreneurs part of the solution,” said Jennifer Young Perlman, Director of Innovation and Partnerships for Pearson. “By combining the award-winning technologies of Cell-Ed and Wizenoze with Pearson’s expertise and resources, we can make a bigger impact on improving people’s lives globally through literacy, which is at the heart of Project Literacy’s mission.”
Project Literacy Lab, a partnership between Pearson and Unreasonable Group, is funding the initial integration of Cell-Ed and Wizenoze products, which learners access through employers, educators and governments around the world. The Lab selected both Cell-Ed and Wizenoze as rapid-growth ventures that are positioned to help close the global literacy gap by 2030.
“As soon as learners gain skills through Cell-Ed, they are eager to apply them online, searching for jobs, flu shot information or a new bank, which is a natural next step. But the internet wasn’t designed with the low literate in mind. Luckily, Wizenoze was, providing a highly valuable solution that allows users to search by readability level so the results they see are understandable, as well as reliable, saving them time and hassle,” said Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami, CEO and founder of Cell-Ed. “Through this unique partnership with industry-leading Wizenoze, Cell-Ed will be able to bring our learners the same access to online information that the higher literate have over any mobile device.”
“This partnership with award-winning Cell-Ed will strengthen our combined ambition to scale worldwide. It enables millions of users to improve their basic literacy skills and find information on the internet that they can truly understand. Having access to understandable information will unleash their full potential,” said Diane Janknegt, CEO and founder of Wizenoze.
About Cell-Ed
Cell-Ed offers a complete mobile solution for employers and education providers to reach, teach, and upskill millions of low-skilled, low-literate, low-wage workers worldwide on any mobile device – from smartphones to tablets to computers to even flip phones – with no internet connection or data plan needed. Our personalized and scalable platform, real-world courses and customizable content are used by Discovery, the States of New York and Virginia, SEIU, the Los Angeles Public Library and others. We are a social enterprise based in Palo Alto, California.
About Wizenoze
Wizenoze gives people access to an internet that matches their reading skills via the largest curated collection of online content available in the world today. The Web for Classrooms (www.webforclassrooms.com) consists of more than 7 million pages and is comprehensively curated and indexed by reading level ability, giving people with lower reading skills access to reliable information on the internet that they understand.
About Project Literacy
Project Literacy is a global movement to make significant and sustainable advances in the fight against illiteracy so that all people – regardless of geography, language, race, class, or gender – have the opportunity to fulfill their potential through the power of words. Founded and convened by Pearson, Project Literacy brings together a diverse and global cross-section of people and organizations to help unlock the potential of individuals, families and communities everywhere to make significant and sustainable advances in literacy over the next five years so that by 2030, no child will be born at risk of poor literacy.