Library For All, AWS & Cognizant boost education for displaced Ukrainian children

The largest refugee migration in Europe since World War II occurred in February 2022, causing over 5 million Ukrainian children to have their education disrupted. An Australian-based not-for-profit education provider, Library For All, has struck up a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partner, Cognizant, to help these young people continue their education - regardless of their location.

Using a cloud-based app, Library For All can rapidly deploy learning resources anywhere in the world. With culturally relevant learning materials, the organisation specifically aims to support Ukrainian children displaced by the conflict. The initiative transformed the non-profit's previous approach of hand-delivering preloaded Android tablets to marginal societies; The scale and efficiency of the AWS Cloud ensured the accessibility of learning content from any location without disruption.

Simon Elisha, Chief Technologist, Worldwide Public Sector ANZ at AWS, commented: "AWS is proud of the work we have done alongside private and public organisations and partners to support the people of Ukraine, and this extends to the great work that Library for All has been doing in developing innovative digital learning tools to create impactful change for children. Working with AWS, Library For All is now able to securely distribute their digital learning resources worldwide in half the time it previously took, all from their base in Australia."

Collaboration with AWS was a first for Library For All in employing cloud technology. Together, they identified operational gaps and built an effective serverless architecture. This teamwork greatly reduced the time and financial investment required to manage the online library.

Cognizant's Director of Technology, Michael Ewald, said that the company felt privileged to be part of the initiative: "Being able to contribute to something as meaningful as helping the children of Ukraine receive access to education during such traumatic and difficult times has meant a lot to our entire business. Library For All, AWS, and Cognizant, worked closely to build a serverless solution, powered by AWS cloud, which ensured open costs were kept to a minimum. We are proud to have helped deliver a solution that enabled Library For All ship these much needed Spark units in time, seeing the units successfully shipped and being received has been truly gratifying."

Since March 2023, Library For All has deployed its free, digital classroom solution globally, providing close to 300 books to over 12,000 Ukrainian children as well as 200 digital learning centres within Ukraine.

Library For All is a not-for-profit organisation that creates and publishes free digital books and learning resources for children without access to a quality education. As of 2023, it has reached over 500,000 children across 16 countries, including Lao PDR, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Ukraine. Library For All's digital books are published in 17 languages.