Two CSR Nonprofit Partners Win Tech Innovation Awards

Two of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) nonprofit grantees, Gooru and Worldreader, have won 2014 Tech Awards from the Tech Museum of Innovation for their work in applying technology to some of the world’s most urgent educational challenges.

Gooru is a free, open-source education search engine. Educators worldwide can use it to personalize and share instructional K-12 content customized to individual students’ needs. The website contains over 16 million videos, slides, digital textbooks, and interactive content that provide engaging ways to teach K-12 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Cisco support is helping Gooru integrate Lessonopoly – a repository of more than 11,000 teacher lessons and study packs – into its platform.

https://youtu.be/7fhtfklF8LE

Worldreader is addressing the problem of global illiteracy by providing inexpensive e-readers to children and young people where printed books are nonexistent or too expensive. A Cisco Global Impact Cash Grant is supporting creation of “Mobile-STEM” – the developing world’s first digital STEM library with 10,000 pieces of free content on mobile phones, e-readers and other internet-capable devices. Worldreader has improved access to education for over 200,000 people in 27 countries around the world, providing more than 5000 book titles in 23 languages. Its goal is to reach 2 million readers by 2015.

At Cisco we believe that encouraging more people to study STEM subjects is critical as more people, processes, data, and things are connected to the Internet. Around the world, many people don’t have access to resources that would enable or inspire them to pursue careers in STEM. By using our expertise, product donations, and cash grants to support organizations like Gooru and Worldreader, we are helping to engage students and deliver STEM education more effectively around the world. Congratulations to both of our nonprofit partners on this outstanding achievement!