The Family Learning Project represents the merger of a few little streams into a growing river of learning for the most needy in the United States, and around the world.
The Project began with the work of Peter Dublin who saw the potential of technology to help children learn in the 1970’s, and made it real with the creation of Bank Street Writer, the first million selling educational software program ever. Peter went on to create the unique learning platform that we use today to create and deliver highly effective learning activities wherever they are needed, whenever learners have time to use them, at extremely low cost.
It continues with the players of the Harlem Globetrotters, who along with spreading good cheer around the world, founded a network of non-profits to support education in their home towns and regions. A friend of theirs, 6’8” Robert Johnson introduced Peter to the Globetrotter Alumni Association. Former player Bobby “Zorro” Hunter and his friend in South Carolina Ed Miller saw the potential and the members of the Alumni Association gave permission to use their personal likeliness in learning software on Peter’s platform to engage kids in learning.
Ed Miller is married to Jerleen Holliman-Miller, the great grand-niece of Mary McLeod Bethune: the mother of African American education in America, and founder of Bethune Cookman University. He and Jerleen created the first Bethune Learning Center in their home town of Mayesville, South Carolina. Every year (except during the pandemic), they host the Mary McLeod Bethune Legacy Festival: a small-town carnival and fundraiser for the Learning Center. A number of former NBA players (including Dale Davis and X-Man Xavier Daniels), Globetrotter alumni, retired football players (Jamie Dukes, Michael Vick) and retired boxers (James “Bonecrusher” Smith, Jackie Frazier-Lyde) all spend the day to help the cause.
Peter brought in his friend Jon Bower to help design a solution that could help the people of Mayesville, and the education deprived around the world. Jon had already helped to build some of the most respected educational software companies in the industry (Lexia Learning, Soliloquy Learning, Avant Assessment). Together, they found research that shows the most effective approach to learning: family learning.
People are social animals. They learn better together than they do alone, including on shared computer screens. They learn particularly well when teamed up with family members who naturally care about them, understand them, and are willing to go the extra mile to motivate and help them. The outcome is the world’s first family learning software, sold by The Family Learning Company.
Knowing that not every family in need of the software can afford it, Peter and Jon also founded the Family Learning Project, a non-profit company founded to work with other non-profits to help those in need. Since then, the Family Learning Project has begun to partner with Fathers in Education on a program for fathers leaving prison and reuniting with their children, with the Twin City Outreach Mission on a program for foster children transitioning to independent adulthood, and with the Elmore Bolling Initiative on family learning in Lowndes County, Alabama; one of the poorest regions in the United States.
The Family Learning Project seeks more non-profit partners interested in improving reading and writing skills in their own regions. Reading and writing are the foundation of learning, and of economic development. Family learning is the best method to develop reading and writing skills, and the most likely approach to succeed in the real world. Family learning software makes it possible to deliver family learning anywhere, anytime at a remarkably low cost. Contact us today to learn more.