Greater Philadelphia: Help Solve the Literacy Crisis with your crowdsourcing /fundraising expertise!

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Have you ever wanted to do something AMAZING to change the world but didn't know where to start?

Here is an opportunity to help underprivileged children, to help under-served children, to help ALL children, and even to help adults who can't read.

Two years ago, the Barbara Bush Foundation and Dollar General sponsored the $7million XPrize for Adult Literacy to bring in teams from around the world to develop an app-based solution to the adult literacy crisis in America.

The parameters of the contest were that teams had to build an app that would teach reading to illiterate and low literate adults without any assistance from another adult (an "independent learning" app).

At the American Youth Literacy Foundation (dba Youth Lit and YouthLit.org), our focus has always been on children's literacy. We joined this competition but opted out after a year.

However, during that year we learned a lot, and since engaging in that experience, we have seen the future potential for this new, digital approach to the reading crisis.

In the past several months we have made major progress on our own "independent learning," smartphone app for children's literacy called FUNetix(r). In September we partnered with one of the five finalists for a prior XPrize called the XPrize for Global Learning, to help us engineer the app.

The app is a digital representation of our patented reading curriculum that we have been using nationwide, for the past 11 years, the same curriculum we've been training tutors in, who, in turn, have taught thousands of children how to read.

We believe that our app is the first critical step to finally solving the literacy crisis in America!

Right now we need people to help us create a better future for, literally, millions of children.

Your idea, or your social media message, or crowdsourcing initiative might make the difference.

We are the American Youth Literacy Foundation, an 11 year old 501 c3 charitable non-profit, and we are building an app for the App Store and Google Play that will be FREE to all children, and that will teach any child how to read in about 12 hours of instruction time without the help of any adult!

Technology advances have lead the world to look for a solution to illiteracy, low literacy and access to education that is app-based, digital, and scaleable!

The FUNetix smartphone app will take a child from the ABC's to a 2nd grade reading level in about 12 hours of total instruction time; and we are giving away, to millions of parents and children, for free, in the App Store and Google Play by Thanksgiving of 2020, one year from now.

But we need your help to create a successful fundraising campaign that will meet our essential funding requirements (currently we need another $150,000 to finish the app).

We know that thousands of people want our app to succeed and to fundamentally reverse the literacy crisis in America. But to make that happen, we need working capital to build, market and distribute this amazing product by Thanksgiving of 2020. And to hit that deadline, we need to finish raising our target amount of $200,000 now!

If you are familiar with fundraising, putting on events, crowdsourcing, developing sponsorships, securing philanthropic donations, writing grants or simply contacting potential donors, then we need your ideas, energy and help.

We have already secured a significant portion of our fundraising goal, through friends, family and matching donations, but we have much further to go. We have a short window of time to raise the money to meet our deadlines and milestones in order to get this app finished in 2020 and out to the children who need it most.

If you've ever wanted to be a part of something that could change the lives of millions of children, bring hope and opportunity to millions of people, and literally, change the world, then please contact us.

We are about to experience an epochal shift in the way reading is taught and the amount of children who will now have access to literacy and, ultimately, higher education! If you've ever wanted to do something AMAZING to change the world, but didn't know how, please consider joining our effort.

Thank you! We truly look forward to hearing from you : )