Within the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, Jospin Hassan didn’t have access to the education opportunities he sought. So, he decided to create his own. 

Hassan knew the booming fields of knowledge science and artificial intelligence could bring job opportunities to his community and help solve local challenges. After earning a spot within the 2020-21 cohort of the Certificate Program in Computer and Data Science from MIT Refugee Motion Hub (ReACT), Hassan began sharing MIT knowledge and skills with other motivated learners in Dzaleka.

MIT ReACT is now Emerging Talent, a part of the Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) at MIT Open Learning. Currently serving its fifth cohort of world learners, Emerging Talent’s year-long certificate program incorporates high-quality computer science and data evaluation coursework from , skilled skill constructing, experiential learning, apprenticeship work, and opportunities for networking with MIT’s global community of innovators. Hassan’s cohort honed their leadership skills through interactive online workshops with J-WEL and the 10-week online MIT Innovation Leadership Bootcamp. 

“My biggest takeaway was networking, collaboration, and learning from one another,” Hassan says.

Today, Hassan’s organization ADAI Circle offers mentorship and teaching programs for youth and other job seekers within the Dzaleka Refugee Camp. The curriculum encourages hands-on learning and collaboration.

Launched in 2020, ADAI Circle goals to foster job creation and reduce poverty in Malawi through technology and innovation. Along with their classes in data science, AI, software development, and hardware design, their Innovation Hub offers web access to anyone in need. 

Doing something different in the neighborhood

Hassan first had the thought for his organization in 2018 when he reached a barrier in his own education journey. There have been several programs within the Dzaleka Refugee Camp teaching learners methods to code web sites and mobile apps, but Hassan felt that they were limited in scope. 

“We had good devices and web access,” he says, “but I desired to learn something recent.” 

Teaming up with co-founder Patrick Byamasu, Hassan and Byamasu set their sights on the longevity of AI and the way that may create more jobs for people of their community. “The world is changing day by day, and data scientists are in a better demand today in various corporations,” Hassan says. “For that reason, I made a decision to expand and share the knowledge that I acquired with my fellow refugees and the encircling villages.”

ADAI Circle draws inspiration from Hassan’s own experience with MIT Emerging Talent coursework, community, and training opportunities. For instance, the MIT Bootcamps model is now standard practice for ADAI Circle’s annual hackathon. Hassan first introduced the hackathon to ADAI Circle students as a part of his final experiential learning project of the Emerging Talent certificate program. 

ADAI Circle’s annual hackathon is now an interactive — and effective — technique to select students who will most profit from its programs. The local schools’ curricula, Hassan says, may not provide enough of an educational challenge. “We will’t teach everyone and accommodate everyone because there are a variety of schools,” Hassan says, “but we provide one other place for knowledge.” 

The hackathon helps students develop data science and robotics skills. Before they begin coding, students need to persuade ADAI Circle teachers that their designs are viable, answering questions like, “What problem are you solving?” and “How will this help the community?” A community-oriented mindset is just as vital to the curriculum.

Along with the sensible skills Hassan gained from Emerging Talent, he leveraged this system’s network to assist his community. Due to a social media connection Hassan made with the nongovernmental organization Give Web after certainly one of Emerging Talent’s virtual events, Give Web brought web access to ADAI Circle.

Bridging the AI gap to unmet communities

In 2023, ADAI Circle connected with one other MIT Open Learning program, Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), which led to a pilot test of a project-based AI curriculum for middle school students. The Responsible AI for Computational Motion (RAICA) curriculum equipped ADAI Circle students with AI skills for chatbots and natural language processing. 

“I liked that program since it was based on what we’re teaching at the middle,” Hassan says, speaking of his organization’s mission of bridging the AI gap to achieve unmet communities.

The RAICA curriculum was designed by education experts at MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP Lab) and AI experts from MIT Personal Robots group and MIT App Inventor. ADAI Circle teachers gave detailed feedback in regards to the pilot to the RAICA team. During weekly meetings with Glenda Stump, education research scientist for RAICA and J-WEL, and Angela Daniel, teacher development specialist for RAICA, the teachers discussed their experiences, prepared for upcoming lessons, and translated the educational materials in real time. 

“We try to create a curriculum that is accessible worldwide and to students who typically have little or no access to technology,” says Mary Cate Gustafson-Quiett, curriculum design manager at STEP Lab and project manager for RAICA. “Working with ADAI and students in a refugee camp challenged us to design in additional culturally and technologically inclusive ways.”

Gustafson-Quiett says the curriculum feedback from ADAI Circle helped inform how RAICA delivers teacher development resources to accommodate learning environments with limited web access. “In addition they exposed places where our team’s western ideals, specifically around individualism, crept into activities within the lesson and contrasted with their more communal cultural beliefs,” she says.

Desperate to introduce more MIT-developed AI resources, Hassan also shared MIT RAISE’s Day of AI curricula with ADAI Circle teachers. The brand new ChatGPT module gave students the possibility to level up their chatbot programming skills that they gained from the RAICA module. A few of the advanced students are taking initiative to make use of ChatGPT API to create their very own projects in education.

“We don’t wish to tell them what to do, we wish them to give you their very own ideas,” Hassan says.

Although ADAI Circle faces many challenges, Hassan says his team is addressing them one after the other. Last 12 months, they didn’t have electricity of their Innovation Hub, but they solved that. This 12 months, they achieved a stable web connection that’s certainly one of the fastest in Malawi. Next up, they’re hoping to secure more devices for his or her students, create more jobs, and add additional hubs throughout the community. The work is rarely done, but Hassan is beginning to see the impact that ADAI Circle is making. 

“For individuals who wish to learn data science, let’s allow them to learn,” Hassan says.