CGI Opening Plenary. Photo credit: John Hanacek

As a global organization, it is not only important to focus on our nation’s education, but the development of education throughout the world.  We were inspired by some of the commitments that were made this past week at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York.

The CGI joined together 1,200 leaders of change from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, companies and governments to find solutions to some of the world's most pressing development challenges- one of which being our global education.

Here commitments were made to fix world challenges through innovative ideas. In total the members of CGI made 194 new commitments worth $6.2 billion that, when fully funded, will benefit more than 100 million people. Their commitments range from improving energy efficiency to providing poor students with broadband access.

One of the commitments was a young global leaders team initiative called The AppBridge to support the growing realm of mobile technology.

Mobile phones are penetrating at an ever increasing rate with the number of SMS sent out in the country topping 35 billion. The cost of a mobile phone is low enough for even the low income group comprising mostly of semi-skilled workers to afford along with the service. Mobile companies also provide very cheap SMS rates to attract customers especially for on-network messaging.

The AppBridge have committed to create and distribute free mobile applications that facilitate education, employment, and economic opportunity.  Their idea targets the poor, uneducated masses. It uses SMS as a means to educate and reach further numbers of people.

Their mission is to empower “The Bottom Billion” youth through universally accessible, demand-driven and market-oriented educational mobile applications by synergizing an open source technology platform with a cooperative ecosystem of education and health content providers, academic institutions, developers, telecom operators, sponsors and end-users. With an estimated 3.8 billion mobile subscribers in the developing world, there is enormous opportunity to provide formal and informal educational tools to individuals who do not otherwise have access to basic math, literacy, and health information.

In partnership with app developers and mobile phone companies, the AppBridge will launch 50 apps in five countries reaching 250,000 individuals. The project will also develop a programming language for apps to work across a spectrum of mobile devices in multiple languages.

Interested in learning more? Read more about The AppBridge future plan.