AWS Commits $100 Million to Bridge Tech Education Gap with AI and Cloud Computing

AWS commits $100 million to help underserved students gain skills in AI, cloud computing, literacy, more

AWS Education Equity Initiative provides education organizations with technologies to build digital learning innovations for underrepresented communities. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, skills in AI, machine learning (ML), cloud computing, and computer science can open doors to boundless opportunities for students. However, not everyone can easily acquire these in-demand, career-enhancing skills. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we are committed to leveling the playing field in education, ensuring learners from underrepresented and underserved communities have equal access to transformative learning opportunities. That's why AWS is committing up to $100 million in cloud credits over the next five years to help qualifying education organizations around the world build or scale digital learning solutions as part of the AWS Education Equity Initiative. This new program will provide recipients with cloud credits, which essentially act like cash that organizations can use to offset the costs of using AWS's cloud services. Recipients can then take advantage of AWS's comprehensive portfolio of cloud technology and advanced AI services to create innovations such as AI assistants, coding curriculums, connectivity tools, student learning platforms, mobile apps, chatbots, and other technology-based learning experiences. They can also get technical expertise from AWS Solution Architects, who will provide architectural guidance, best practices for responsible AI implementation, and ongoing optimization support. Bringing digital learning technologies to underserved communities AWS is already working with more than 50 organizations from 10 countries, enabling them to use advanced technologies to bring digital learning solutions to underserved and underrepresented communities. Examples include: Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to providing computer science and AI education for K-12 schools with a focus on supporting young women and students from underrepresented groups, will use AWS's cloud credits to scale an AI Teaching Assistant. This innovation has already helped teachers reduce the time they spend assessing students' coding projects by up to 50%. Improved efficiency means teachers have more time to work on personalized lesson plans and coach students. Code.org's AI Teaching Assistant is powered by Amazon Bedrock, AWS's fully managed service to build and scale generative AI innovations.Rocket Learning, an India-based nonprofit that improves access to quality, early-childhood education for underserved children, will scale a project that leverages Amazon Q in AWS QuickSight as a generative business intelligence service to analyze trends and the effectiveness of video and WhatsApp-based content delivered to educators and parents. This analysis helps optimize content to enhance learning outcomes for children across diverse regions, taking into account varying languages and cultural differences.Tangible Africa, a nonprofit that equips children in South Africa with coding skills, will scale offline coding curriculum built on AWS to reach 10,000 learners and 120 teachers in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. Unlocking education and career opportunities The AWS Education Equity Initiative builds on Amazon and AWS's longstanding commitment to unlock education and career opportunities for underserved learners. In the past year, more than 2 million students have received over 17 million hours of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), literacy, and career development courses through Amazon Future Engineer, a childhood-to-career program dedicated to increasing access to computer science education for students from underserved and underrepresented groups, and other Amazon education programs. AWS's AI and ML Scholarship Program has awarded $28 million in scholarships to approximately 6,000 students to prepare them for a career in AI. With the addition of the AWS Education Equity Initiative, AWS will be able to help nonprofits, education technology companies, social enterprises, governments, and corporate social responsibility teams expand access to learning and development opportunities to underrepresented and underserved communities.

AWS pledges $100M in cloud credits to help education organizations build learning tools | TechCrunch

AWS, Amazon's cloud computing unit, today announced the Education Equity Initiative, which aims to provide "education organizations with technologies to build digital learning innovations for underrepresented communities." AWS is committing $100 million in cloud credits to this effort over the next five years. Tom Berry, who leads the education work within AWS's Social Impact and Responsibility team, told me that this initiative is a bit of a departure from how the company has traditionally thought about these projects. Typically, these programs have focused on building projects that train teachers and kids directly. "Now we realize from learning from that work -- work that we've done with Code.org and others for a while -- the people best situated to impact underserved community learners are those organizations building experiences there," Berry said. The plan is to support hundreds of non-profit organizations globally over the next five years and help them build the tools to teach their local communities coding and other computer-related skills. If necessary, AWS will also provide hands-on help with building and scaling the applications that these organizations will build. The team already ran a pilot with 50 organizations from 10 different countries. Rocket Learning, for example, an India-based nonprofit that improves access to quality, early-childhood education for underserved children, which is using Amazon Q in AWS Quicksight to build tools that allow it to evaluate the effectiveness of the content they are building. Code.org, the well-known nonprofit organization dedicated to providing computer science education to K-12 schools is another early partner (and a long-time Amazon partner in similar education initiatives). Code.org rolled out a new tool for computer science teachers as part of this program that is essentially an AI teaching assistant. "The pain point and problem in computer science education that we see on the teaching side is that many teachers are new to computer science. They didn't get computer science education in their college time," Code.org chief product officer Karim Meghji told me. "They don't have the confidence. They're looking at projects in some of our curriculum, which are project-based learning. They're looking at these projects and we want the student to bring their own kind of identity and expression into the project. But here's a teacher saying: I got this rubric. I got 20 of these projects. What am I going to do with this?"

Exclusive: Amazon commits $100 million to bridge inequalities in tech education

Digital technology has become ubiquitous in U.S. classrooms, with a growing number of schools now embracing generative AI. Nevertheless, equitable access remains a challenge, with millions of families, often in underserved and underrepresented communities, without access to computer or internet at home. This not only hinders students' abilities to join class remotely, do homework, or simply fit in -- it also creates a divide on what's seen as possible for career opportunities. Amazon is hoping to help change this dynamic. In a Fortune exclusive, the company is announcing the establishment of the Amazon Education Equity Initiative -- a $100 million commitment to help education organizations develop digital learning opportunities for underserved and underrepresented communities. Over the next five years, the funds will be distributed in the form of AWS cloud credits. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI and data at Amazon Web Services (AWS), says the initiative is grounded in the idea that AI is the most transformational technology of this generation and will fundamentally change every industry -- and barriers to technology need to be broken. "Education and opportunity should be available to everyone," Sivasubramanian tells Fortune. "Unfortunately, if you look at it, the global demand for education technology is increasing, but many organizations in the edtech sector that serve learners from underserved communities, they do not have the resources they need to leverage cutting-edge technologies like cloud and AI." Organizations like Tangible Africa and Code.org have previously partnered with Amazon and have been providing computer science education to millions of students around the globe. This new initiative will allow projects to scale. Code.org, for example, plans to expand its AI teaching assistant, which is powered by Amazon Bedrock. Karim Meghji, chief product officer at Code.org, says the commitment is exciting because of its ability to empower educational organizations of all sizes to use AWS technology to bring positive outcomes on students' lives. "This equity initiative, and the funding and the support that Amazon is pledging, I think, can have an amazing outcome in terms of reaching those students through big and small organizations in a way that I've seen it transform the lives of students that we serve directly every day through Code.org." Learn more: Here are 7 free AI classes you can take online from top tech firms, universities Learning about computer science and AI is paramount, Sivasubramanian and Meghji both say -- no matter if students want to work in software engineering, nursing, finance, or any other field. "AI is going to be such a necessary skill in the same way it is important that you know like Word and Excel and various other things," Sivasubramanian adds. For those looking for a tech career in particular, Sivasubramanian suggests that understanding core aspects of computer science, like how operating systems work and how programs execute, is critical -- alongside the ability to use AI to help program. "It's not about learning 10 different programming languages, but it's about learning how to program, let's say maybe one, and then embrace these AI assistants," he says. He points to a 2023 AWS survey that found that employers are willing to pay an average of 47% more for a worker with AI skills versus someone without them. Internally, he adds, when AWS internally began developing and using its own AI assistant, Amazon Q, the company saved about 4,500 developer years. The number of new software developer jobs over the next decade is expected to be the second highest of any occupation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both Sivasubramanian and Meghji also point to computational thinking or problem-solving as softer skills that every student should master to ultimately unlock career opportunities and drive economic gains for them. "The super important thing we all need to do is expand the access, especially for young learners, and get them access to the cutting edge technology and democratize education to not just millions, but hundreds of millions of students from underserved and underrepresented parts of the community as well," Sivasubramanian says. Organizations can apply for AWS's Education Equity Initiative online. Amazon is No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list and earned over $30 billion in profit in 2023 alone. AWS controls the largest percentage of the cloud infrastructure market, according to Synergy Research Group.