10 Years of Mondly | 10 Stories – Story 9: Good for the Soul

Learning languages is about so much more than being able to communicate.

It opens up new opportunities, careers, and experiences that fundamentally shape and transform someone’s life.

Through the app, education partnerships, and community initiatives, Mondly by Pearson set out to bring those opportunities within reach for a much wider audience.

An incentive to dream bigger

“In Romania, sometimes kids from the countryside don’t have access to certain things that we have in the big cities,” explains Co-Founder Alex Iliescu.

“I feel like if they can open an app on a tablet that the government provided and play Mondly, that’s great.

“They can engage with a language at a basic level and think ‘I want to learn this language when I grow up’ — and maybe that triggers something in their education along the way.

“It’s a glimpse — of what this could be and where it can take you. It’s an incentive to dream bigger”.

Used by school children around the world, in 2021 MondlyWorks became an official supplier to the Israeli Ministry of Education. Now, more than 100,000 students are learning English, Hebrew, and Arabic with Mondly as part of the national curriculum in Israel.

Giving back

But not all schools could afford to invest in language learning.

From 2017 to 2022, Mondly partnered with many schools and charitable foundations to provide free Mondly access to children and adults from vulnerable environments.

It was about unlocking opportunities — and the Mondly team wanted to go even further.

Access to the best, intuitive technology — a MacBook — had changed what Alex and Tudor could achieve, and the brothers wanted to give others in Romania the same opportunity.

It started with the Transilvania University of Brașov. In 2019, the brothers donated a total of 30 iMacs, enabling students to develop iOS apps and leading to the Mondly iOS App Development course.

At the start of 2020, Mondly expanded its community program to High Schools across Brașov and Făgăraș, investing in 40 iMacs across four computer labs.

From sponsoring local students to attend international conferences or donating a state-of-the-art ultrasound machine to Brașov Children’s Hospital, Mondly looks for ways to facilitate access and open up opportunities across education, health, and sports.

Good for the soul

Working with such a clear purpose and impact motivates us. Many team members have directly experienced the impact of language learning and want to bring that opportunity to more people through their work.

“English is my second language”, explains Ebrahim Matthews, SVP Product at Pearson. “The only way I’ve been able to get where I am is a bit of luck and my ability to develop a reasonable proficiency in English.

“The fact that you can play quite a meaningful role in helping others to also improve their livelihoods — their station in life — it’s super fulfilling. It’s good for the soul.”

Matching missions

Enabling more people to connect, to learn, and to reach their potential — this shared purpose bonds the Pearson and Mondly teams.

“It’s very, very connected,” explains Gio Giovannelli, President of Pearson ELL, “the purpose that we have is to add life to a lifetime of learning — to create this vibrant, enriching learning experience designed for real-time impact.

“This is exactly what Mondly does. It’s vibrant, it’s enriching, it’s a learning experience, and it has an impact on your life.”

— Read the next story in our 10-part series: The Next Wave of Wow

THE MILESTONES

• 30 iMacs donated to Transilvania University of Brașov (2019)
• Mondly Kids featured in Apple story about kids learnings from home (Mar 2020)
• 2000 free daily lessons (Jul 2020)
• Four computer labs launched in Brașov (Jan-Feb 2020)
• MondlyWorks becomes an official supplier to the Israeli Ministry of Education. (Oct 2021)
• Mondly Offers Free Language Courses for Millions of Ukrainian Refugees (Feb 2022)