Urdu AI has been selected as a winner of the S&P Global Foundation’s StepForward Award, becoming one of only six programmes chosen globally through MIT Solve’s Essential Innovation Challenge, a recognition that places Urdu-language artificial intelligence education on the world stage alongside some of the most impactful innovation initiatives identified internationally this year. The award was announced by Qaisar Roonjha, Founder and Executive Director of WANG, the organisation implementing the initiative across Pakistan.
StepForward is a three-year, ten million dollar programme run jointly by S&P Global and the S&P Global Foundation to equip youth with artificial intelligence fundamentals and the practical skills needed to succeed in an increasingly artificial intelligence-driven workforce. Being selected alongside MIT RAISE, Generation, and the United Nations Youth Office affirms that Urdu AI’s model of making artificial intelligence education accessible in a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people is being recognised as a genuinely distinctive and scalable contribution to the global artificial intelligence literacy agenda. The initiative is implemented by WANG in collaboration with AVPN, described as the core institutional partner whose support made the work possible, and is backed by Google.org and the Asian Development Bank.
Urdu AI’s recognition through this award reflects years of community-level work delivering artificial intelligence education to learners from Chaman to Khanewal, Lasbela to Lucky Marwat, reaching students and teachers in areas where English-language artificial intelligence resources have had limited penetration. The AI Opportunity Fund: Asia-Pacific framework under which the initiative operates connects this local delivery model to a broader regional strategy for democratising artificial intelligence literacy across markets where language has been one of the most persistent barriers to digital inclusion. For Pakistan’s technology and education ecosystem, the award signals that locally grounded, linguistically inclusive approaches to artificial intelligence education are not only viable but are being recognised internationally as among the most essential models for ensuring that the benefits of the artificial intelligence era reach populations that global technology platforms have historically struggled to serve.
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