About Us

Aul.Inspired is a project dedicated to developing social-emotional learning through English language acquisition for children in rural areas of Kazakhstan, founded by students of Harvard University.

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Goal: Enable over one million children in rural areas of Kazakhstan to have access to better quality educational opportunities, while eliminating the knowledge and skills gap between rural and urban children.

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SEL skills are critically important for the long-term educational and professional success of all students in communities and the workplace. These competencies are not emphasized in schools in Kazakhstan today. While SEL helps reduce risky behaviors and improve mental health, it’s not intended to “control” children’s behaviors or diagnose problems. Instead, it’s meant to enhance the many social and emotional strengths that all students already possess, and can increase their ability to connect and communicate with their peers and decrease social anxiety.

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Research suggests that early childhood is a critical period for fostering SEL. Children are at their most receptive to SEL and strategies targeting this stage are most likely to have a lasting impact, which is why our project targets children between 10–13. Since SEL interventions show the largest effect size when the intervention is designed with a specific context or culture in mind, we incorporate elements of traditional Kazakh culture into our digital education platform. Education technology that focuses simultaneously on foundational academic subjects (such as English-language instruction) and social and emotional skills (such as self-awareness and communication) are most in demand.

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Since its founding, the project earned a Summer Fellowship Award from Harvard Graduate School of Education; became a resident at Harvard Innovation Lab and earned a cash award for developing its minimal viable product (MVP), which can be found at https://base-english.org/.