Charity partner case studies

Hello World

Our powerful partnership with Hello World is delivering a two-year programme to provide access to education for up to 80,000 children and adults in communities across Uganda. Education is currently inaccessible to over 258 million children and 40% of the global population has no access to the internet. Hello World’s mission is to bridge this digital divide and improve connectivity and inclusion among disconnected communities.

Hello World partners with communities to build Hello Hubs, solar powered internet kiosks, fitted with eight screens loaded with leading educational software, so that children can learn, access digital educational resources and improve their future by connecting globally. The Hubs also provide a free, no password, Wi-Fi hotspot, for people who do not own their own devices.

We are funding the building of 64 abrdn Hello Hubs and we are proud of the progress achieved a year into our partnership. 11 communities now have access to internet through an abrdn Hello Hub, which has helped change the lives of up to 14,000 people. Our investment has enabled Hello World to scale their team and expertise in Uganda and to continue to innovate with the design, engineering, and functionality of Hello Hubs for communities. Our plans for the next 53 abrdn Hello Hubs are firmly in place and we are looking forward to delivering this mission and providing unlimited access to digital education for many more communities.

Our pilot ‘Hub mentors programme’ has also helped to connect our people directly to the communities through Hello World Community Support Officers (CSOs), who support the daily running of their local Hubs. This two-way partnership was set up to enable the sharing of skills and ideas between our people and CSOs and the opportunity to build meaningful connections that were previously impossible due to the digital divide. As we progress our partnership we hope to be able develop additional programmes as more abrdn Hello Hubs come online.