Adolescent young girls  in severely underserved communities across the world face significant barriers accessing a quality education, and in the midst of a global pandemic, this is made even harder. It is nearly impossible to overcome these barriers without proper incentive, a support system, and access to services like mentorship and tutoring. Spoken English is necessary and essential to get good jobs later on. 

As part of our Covid-19 response, Asia Initiatives enlisted young SoCC Buddies around the world to tutor children in spoken English over video conference. 

Learning Cascades employs a multistep process to empower and educate girls through a program of peer education and social capital credits (SoCCs). Participants tutor younger students earning SoCCs for each session. SoCCs can then be redeemed for after-school spoken English lessons on zoom. Each SoCC Buddy holds a 30 mins virtual session in the morning once or twice a week. Buddies earn SoCCs for each session on our App available on Google Play or Apple Store. This program now has 80 students from around India with 10 mentors in the US. Starting July 2021, this program will be scaled up to 200 participants and hopefully 25 mentors.