Social Entrepeneur: Isabelle Duston

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Isabelle Duston is the founder and General Project Manager of iLearn4Free. Her endeavor and efforts have been acknowledged by several institutions such as the Learning Without Frontiers International Festival through the Innovation Award for the primary and pre-school learning category, and by Virginia’s Region 2000 Technology Council through the 2011 Innovator of the Year Award among others. Indeed, the impact she aims to have on the mobile technology field positions her as a respectable social entrepreneur.

Although enrollment in primary education has constantly risen throughout the world, illiteracy is still a pressing issue and new challenges have arisen from the need to prove sufficient teachers and infrastructures to developing countries. Universal primary education is the second goal among the United Nation’s (UN) Millennium Development Goals and the main concern of the World Bank Education Strategy 2020. However, because of a lack of resources, the pace of progress is insufficient to ensure that “by 2015, children everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling” as it is targeted by the UN. Duston believes that literacy allows for development and growth both at the individual and community scale. Reading and writing are closely related to eradicating poverty and promoting gender equality. Likewise, organizations such as the Sesame Workshop, are committed to developing literacy and numeracy skills around the world through educational technology tools. Sesame Workshop, the organization that created Sesame Street, promotes the use of available technological tools, such as television and mobile phones, to educate children. This nonprofit is an established organization that benefits from its scale to ma...

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...ermine the viability of the business idea and assess new ways of funding the project.

Works Cited

Bronfman, Charles R., and Jeffrey R. Solomon. "Should a Charity Be Like a Business? - WSJ.com." Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - Wsj.com. 28 Nov. 2011. Web. 07 Feb. 2012. .

Crutchfield, Leslie R., and Heather McLeod Grant. Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-impact Nonprofits. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.

Duston, Isabelle. "ILearn 4 Free | Teaching Through Digital Technology." ILearn 4 Free. Web. Apr. 2012. .

Ferenstein, Greg. "Featured in Social Media." Mashable. 19 July 2010. Web. 04 Apr. 2012. .

United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010

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