Before Covid hit, RICH Learning International (RLI) was piloting summer educational enrichment camps for young children in the US, India and Ethiopia. We trained exceptional young adults in our brain-based learning methods on arts-based platforms. We sent them out in teams to sing, dance, laugh, learn and play with 75 children and a dozen teachers at a time. We researched the neurology of music, art, dance, theater and fun. We made friends and mentors from among the top neuroscientists in the world in the areas of music, movement, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia and early learning. We wrote 500+ preschool songs with 38 musicians. The results were phenomenal.

After seven weeks in our summer pilots, 3, 4 and 5-years olds were scoring higher than their older siblings in reading, spelling and literacy. Children were delightfully learning math and science with music, art and dance. Little actors were costuming up and performing theater to teach their parents and grandparents about health and virtue. Teachers were learning how to enhance every lesson and every subject using the arts at the core of not only information acquisition but creative problem solving and collaborative learning.

Then the pandemic hit.

Rather than wasting time waiting it out, Dr. Rich Melheim and Dr. Wm. C. Nelsen, co-founders of RLI, pivoted toward emerging technologies as a possible delivery system to the masses of underserved children who could never hope of attending a top school. Partnering with the creative team at RICH Learning Global (RLG), they began devising a plan to leverage emerging technologies to reach millions.

“We could never afford to hire, train, equip, house, feed and maintain enough great teachers to reach children around the world,” says Dr. Rich. “So began to look at the AR/VR/AI/LM ‘help-me-Obi-Wan-Kenobi, you’re my only hope’ haptic holographic future of education in the Metaverse as a means to scaling to the masses.

“At best, delivering access to excellence in the brick-and-mortar schools with highly trained and motivated young teachers could enrich 10,000 or 100,000 kids in our lifetimes. Creating crazy fun personalized cartoon virtual tutors became an inticing option. Harnessing AI’s potential – particularly in the emerging areas of LLMs (large language model) became a possibility. And customizing virtual immersive learning environments through cartoon stories, songs and games in the Metaverse became a distinct possibility that would allow us to reach hundreds of millions of underserved children.

Dr. Wm Nelsen, co-founder of RLI, built the largest private scholarship fund in American history, built the $5.7B Scholarship America . He agreed: “With satellite technologies enabling us to beam our AI cartoon teachers and lessons to every village on the planet, we now believe we can literally enrich the lives of billions who currently have no onramp to the future of education. We just need the right partners with the vision, passion and means to help us get this off the ground.”