Backing the builders closest to America’s learners with the AWS Education Equity Initiative

The United States faces a significant literacy challenge: 28 percent of U.S. adults ages 16–65 performed at Level 1 or below in literacy in the PIAAC assessment, while 69 percent of U.S. fourth-graders performed below the NAEP Proficient level in reading.

These challenges fall hardest on learners from underserved populations, including children from lower-income families and people affected by the correctional system, as 25 percent of formerly incarcerated people have no high school diploma or General Education Development (GED), almost twice the rate of the general public.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) supports innovators and social enterprises across the U.S. that are creating digital learning solutions for those facing barriers to education. Nonprofits, mission-driven edtechs, and grassroots organizations understand the needs of learners because they are closest to these communities. What they often lack is access to the AI and cloud technology that can transform big ideas into scalable solutions.

Education is a cornerstone of human development, driving economic mobility, health and well-being, civic participation, and human potential. The AWS Education Equity Initiative (EEI) is one way AWS is unlocking impact for millions of learners. In its first year, this five-year $100 million commitment to education equity supported 300+ organizations across more than 40 countries, with 76 percent integrating AI into their education solutions — from voice tutors that work on basic keypad phones to personalized literacy tools powered by generative AI.

When community-embedded builders gain access to AWS technology, they create solutions that are more relevant, more responsive, and more likely to reach learners. Here’s how four social enterprises across the U.S. are making an impact for the learners they serve.

Black Girls Do Engineer: Creating a STEM pipeline for Black girls

In the U.S., representation gaps in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) begin early and compound over time. Women of color make up less than five percent of the STEM workforce, and research shows that girls, particularly Black girls, typically begin to disengage from STEM during middle school. Without sustained intervention across multiple years, early interest rarely translates into career entry.

Black Girls Do Engineer runs a continuum of programming for girls and young women ages 6–21 that combines hands-on training in coding, robotics, AI, and engineering design with mentorship from industry professionals, leadership development, $56,000+ in scholarships awarded to date, and structured career preparation.

With virtual learning available through its STEMXUS learning management system, Black Girls Do Engineer has served more than 7,000 girls and hosted 400+ workshops since launch in 2019, with a goal of reaching 25,000 by 2030 and two million by 2050.

On AWS, the organizatin’s STEM Portfolio system is powered by Amazon DynamoDB for scalable learner records and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for project and certification storage. It tracks each participant’s projects, certifications, and skills across years, not just a single cohort.

AWS technology enables Black Girls Do Engineer to maintain personalized, long-term learner records at scale, deliver virtual training regardless of location through STEMXUS, and connect participants to employer networks in real time, with 60 percent of participants coming from underserved communities.

American Access Institute: Career pathways for foster youth

For young people aging out of foster care, navigating the juvenile justice system, or facing significant socioeconomic barriers, the path from education to employment can feel abstract and overwhelming. Stable access to guidance counsellors’ professional networks is often unavailable, leaving the most vulnerable youth without the structured support their peers can take for granted.

American Access Institute (AAI) serves individuals ages 14 through young adulthood, partnering with community-based nonprofits, foster care programs, juvenile justice and diversion programs, charter and alternative high schools, recovery organizations, and workforce development agencies. Its Catapult platform on AWS acts as a structured, always-available career readiness guide — something a static website or offline tool can’t offer. It uses Amazon SageMaker AI for career matching based on strengths, interests, and real-time Bureau of Labor Statistics data, including income and cost-of-living metrics. It then guides students towards four practical pathways: trade schools, military, technology upskilling, and entrepreneurship.

On Catapult, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) provides secure and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)-compliant data storage, while cloud infrastructure means the platform is available on-demand from any mobile device, can personalize guidance for thousands of users simultaneously, provides real-time progress tracking for mentors and educators, and scales without requiring local servers or IT support in the communities that need it most.

Every young person, regardless of circumstance, can explore access to the equivalent of a dedicated career counselor in their pocket — one that learns with them and connects aspiration to real workforce outcomes. AAI is expanding Catapult’s reach to thousands of foster teens and vulnerable populations across the U.S.

Play With ASL: Making sign language accessible through interactive play

Play With ASL is a Deaf-owned edtech company changing the way people learn to sign. American Sign Language (ASL) bridges Deaf and hearing communities while opening pathways to careers in education, interpreting, healthcare, and public service.

ASL is one of the top foreign language programs in the U.S., yet access to quality ASL instruction remains limited. Play With ASL has already secured letters of intent from more than 30 universities including Yale University, Boston University, Purdue, and the University of Texas. Its School Edition is built for K–12 and higher education, and a consumer application is for families and independent learners.

Play With ASL’s gamified platform is built by Deaf creators and turns ASL leaning into interactive play: memory matching, TILT! (a multiplayer signing and guessing game), fingerspelling challenges, and collaborative activities that build receptive and expressive ASL skills.

On AWS, the platform delivers real-time multiplayer interaction across classrooms nationwide, personalized learning experiences informed by data usage, elastic scaling to support thousands of schools simultaneously without performance degradation, and secure content delivery via Amazon CloudFront. AWS infrastructure means every learner gets a responsive, data-driven experience whether they’re in a well-funded district or rural school with limited IT support.

Play With ASL is also exploring AI-powered learning experiences and multimodal interaction workflows on AWS, laying the foundation for next-generation educational tools built around visual-spatial language. The aim is for ASL learning to become continuous, interactive, and available to anyone with a device — turning what was once a specialist subject into an accessible skill that connects communities.

Edovo: Bringing education and rehabilitation to 1.1 million incarcerated learners

Education is one of the most powerful tools for creating opportunity during and after incarceration. Research from RAND Corporation found that people who participate in correctional education have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison, yet access to education inside correctional facilities has historically been limited by barriers like staffing shortages, security restrictions, limited connectivity, and cost.

Edovo was built to overcome those barriers and is the largest learning platform for incarcerated people in America. Operating in over 1,500 correctional facilities and reaching more than 1.1 million incarcerated individuals, Edovo delivers free daily access to educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programming through secure correctional tablets.

Learners have spent more than 130 million hours on the Edovo platform, across 35,000+ hours of content from over 750 content partners. Programming spans GED preparation, college coursework, vocational training, cognitive behavioral therapy, substance use recovery, parenting, and more.

The platform operates through four integrated applications: Edovo Learn, the self-directed learner experience; Edovo Insight, which gives correctional staff visibility and management of learning and progress; Edovo Editor, enabling education providers to publish and manage programming; and Edovo’s transcript tools, giving learners a portable record of their educational progress that can be securely shared beyond the facility with advocates, attorneys, family members, and others. Transcripts are often used to demonstrate progress in court and parole hearings, while also supporting reentry, employment, and continued education.

Built on AWS, Edovo offers personalized learning experiences for hundreds of thousands of concurrent learners, real-time content updates across facilities without manual hardware intervention at each site, secure credential storage accessible to external advocates, and the elastic infrastructure to scale nationally without deploying IT teams to individual institutions. Further, 92 percent of learners report Edovo positively impacted their incarceration experience.

Technology makes it possible to overcome many of the barriers that have historically limited access to education in corrections. By putting meaningful learning opportunities directly in the hands of incarcerated people, Edovo is helping more people build skills, prepare for reentry, and create opportunities for what comes next.

AWS supports the innovators who are making an impact

With EEI and digital learning solutions built on AI and cloud technology, AWS empowers learners at every stage of the K-to-career continuum — from early learning and K–12 to higher education classrooms via AWS Academy, which supports more than 10,000 faculty members in over 7,000 higher ed institutions globally, skilling more than two millions students to date. Adult skilling programs like AWS re/Start are preparing learners for the future of work and connecting them to potential employers.

Organizations closest to learners understand the problems their communities face better than anyone, and the social enterprises in this post represent the diversity of innovation happening at the intersection of education, technology, and equity in North America. From foster youth navigating their first career decision to incarcerated adults preparing for reentry, each solution is built by innovators who understand the specific contexts of the learners they serve.

If your organization is developing digital learning solutions for underserved communities, learn how the AWS Education Equity Initiative can help scale your impact.

This post was authored by Aanya Niaz, Global Leader, AWS Education Equity Initiative.