BBC Janala, our innovative English language learning project in Bangladesh, has served a million lessons in just three months.
Janala (Window), the BBC World Service Trust's multi-platform media project that provides English lessons in Bangladesh has delivered over one million mobile lessons in just three months.
The Janala team recently attended the Mobile World Congress (GMSA) in Barcelona, Spain and took part in a special feature on mobile education.
"We knew demand for English was strong in Bangladesh, but the response to BBC Janala has been nothing short of phenomenal," said Sara Chamberlain, who runs the Bangladesh interactive team. "The growth of mobile is clearly creating an opportunity to provide access to education in a way simply not possible before."
Dawn Haig-Thomas, the development fund director for GSMA, who also spoke at the event, talked about Janala's innovative use of mobile technology:
"(It) delivers education in a remarkable way. Mobile is the most ubiquitous communications platform and an incredibly innovative tool. By providing tangible, accessible and necessary mobile services to people in developing countries, mobile can help improve people's lives."
As the Janala project continues, can it provide one of the first economically viable models for educational learning technology in the developing world?
At the conference and beyond, the team has been approached by numerous people within the mobile and development sectors to see whether equivalent services can be run in countries across Asia and the Middle East. So watch this space.
BBC Janala is funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) through English in Action, a major educational initiative launched to raise the language skills of 25 million people in Bangladesh by 2017.
