Immersio Language Platform

Language loss is a critical worldwide issue, so much that on average one language is lost almost every other week. With every loss of a language, a cultural way of knowing and perceiving the world dies with it. With this phenomenon, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages was created by the UN to help slow and reverse this problem. 

In Canada, many Indigenous languages are at risk of extinction, with only a small number of speakers remaining. This is due to historical factors such as the residential school system, which aimed to assimilate Indigenous children and eradicate their cultural identities. Language plays a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage, promoting a sense of identity, and fostering community resilience. However, access to quality resources and learning opportunities for Indigenous languages is often limited, creating a significant barrier to revitalization efforts.

Immersio Language Platform is a groundbreaking software platform made with Indigenous peoples and for Indigenous peoples. It has been designed to democratize language learning and remove barriers for Indigenous communities. 

The Immersio Language Platform enables language instructors to build, market, sell, and deliver their own language knowledge through immersive conversational learning experiences. Partnering with Four Our Future Indigenous Economics will help provide us connections with elders, language speakers, cultural keepers, and more as we continue to expand the platform.

The platform incorporates state-of-the-art technology, including artificial intelligence and natural language processing to allow knowledge keepers and instructors to quickly create unique and engaging learning experiences to revitalize our communities. 

It is user-friendly and adaptable, allowing instructors to create customized language courses tailored to their students' needs. By focusing on conversational learning experiences, the platform promotes language fluency and cultural understanding through real-life interactions.

In addition to providing an accessible platform for language learning, the Immersio Language Platform offers resources and support to help instructors effectively market and sell their courses, reaching a broader audience and generating revenue to sustain their teaching efforts.

Immersio Language Platform serves Indigenous communities and language instructors in Canada who are working to revitalize and preserve their languages. The platform also caters to learners interested in acquiring Indigenous language skills and gaining a deeper understanding of Indigenous cultures.

By offering an accessible and flexible platform for language instruction, Immersio empowers communities to take control of their language revitalization efforts. Access to quality language learning resources can strengthen cultural identity, foster community resilience, and promote intergenerational connections.

Furthermore, the platform's focus on immersive conversational learning experiences enables learners to become more confident and fluent speakers, directly contributing to language preservation. The revenue generated by marketing and selling courses can help support instructors and create sustainable language learning opportunities within Indigenous communities.

The Immersio Language Platform is designed to benefit Indigenous communities across Canada, particularly those striving to preserve and revitalize their endangered languages, such as the Nisga’a, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Ojibwe, Inuktitut, and Mi'kmaq, among others. We work closely with language instructors, community leaders, and members to understand their unique needs and challenges in language preservation efforts.

By providing an accessible and innovative platform for language instruction, our solution empowers these communities to take control of their language revitalization efforts, fosters cultural preservation, and strengthens their sense of identity. We actively engage with the communities throughout the development process, ensuring that our platform is tailored to their specific requirements and aspirations. For instance, we organize workshops, focus groups, and community consultations to gather feedback and insights that inform our platform's design and features.

Further, the Immersio platform has a patented asynchronous tutoring tool, allowing language speakers to see how their students are doing with their language, pronunciation, and much more even from afar. This aspect will even be useful beyond language learning, for the purposes of sharing cultural crafts, songs, and much more.

Our team at Immersio consists of passionate individuals with diverse backgrounds, including expertise in software development, linguistics, education, Indigenous culture keeping, and language revitalization. The co-founder David has decades of experience teaching English as a Second Language and applies teaching insights and best practices to bringing other ancient languages back to life, such as Latin, ancient Greek, and Aramaic. The other co-founder Phong has decades of experience running an English language school in Vietnam, and making the most of native speakers. And recently they have an advisory board, including technical support from an Amazon VP, UBC's Hatch incubator, and SFU's VentureLabs. 

Our partners, Four Our Future Indigenous Economics, are connected with speakers of the languages we aim to preserve, adding a level of depth to our efforts. This enables our team to approach the development of the platform with cultural sensitivity and firsthand understanding of the challenges faced by these communities. They have established partnerships with local Indigenous organizations and educational institutions to collaborate on content development, community outreach, and platform implementation.

By working closely with Indigenous communities and incorporating their valuable input, our team is well-positioned to design and deliver a solution that meets their unique needs. We prioritize the communities' input, ideas, and agendas throughout the development process, ensuring that our platform is truly representative of their cultural heritage and aspirations.

We are applying to Solve to gain access to a supportive network of partners, mentors, and resources that can help us overcome various challenges and barriers in our mission to preserve Indigenous languages. We hope Solve can assist us in refining our business model, expanding our user base, enhancing our technology, and navigating legal or regulatory matters. By collaborating with Solve, we believe we can further amplify our impact and contribute to the revitalization of endangered Indigenous languages in a more meaningful and effective manner.

David has been working for years with indigenous communities, especially with Four in Future in British Columbia and Moose Cree First Nation in Ontario. He brings he experience as a tech entrepreneur and language instructor. He possesses extensive experience in project management, community engagement, and partnership development, which has proven invaluable in leading our team and driving our mission forward.

With a strong commitment to empowering Indigenous communities and preserving their cultural heritage, David is dedicated to ensuring that our platform meets the unique needs and aspirations of the Indigenous communities and language teachers and students we serve. Under his leadership, our team has successfully collaborated with various Indigenous organizations and educational institutions to advance our platform and enhance its impact.

In essence, Immersio gets blended learning done right. It's the first language teaching platform purpose built for creating, speaking, and teaching language content, powered by advances in AI and built upon its patent-pending “Immersive Multimodal Comprehensible Input” methodology. Because it allows language creators to own their content and user data, it can be a key tool for language revitalization to end the language death occurring. There currently is no other digital tool specifically made for creating your own language learning experiences.

Our organization's goal is to create a world where any language can be learned and spoken by anyone. 

We want to empower more than 5000 indigenous communities to revitalize their language and culture.

We want to create more than 100000 opportunities for indigenous knowledge keepers.

We want to reverse the trend of language death and see millions of youth once again having fluency in their ancestral languages.

We we know how language and culture are interconnected, how true diversity comes with having literally different language voices at the table, and how learning another language simply gives opportunities and perspectives.

The following are the specific goals we see Immersio achieving.

UN SDG Goal 10.2 “By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status”

UN SDG Goal 11.4 “Total per capita expenditure on the preservation, protection and conservation of all cultural and natural heritage, by source of funding (public, private), type of heritage (cultural, natural) and level of government (national, regional, and local/municipal)”

UN SDG Goal 17.16 “Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries, in particular developing countries”

So, our main indicators will be the number languages, number of nations, and number of learners on the platform.

Our theory of change for our language revitalization platform intends to bring about positive change in language communities. 

1. Assumptions:

   • Language is a crucial component of cultural identity and heritage.
   • Language revitalization efforts require community engagement and ownership.
   • Access to technology can play a vital role in language revitalization.
   • Language revitalization is a long-term process that requires sustained efforts.

2. Vision:

   • The platform envisions a future where endangered languages are revitalized, spoken, and preserved by vibrant communities.

3. Goal:

   • The platform aims to support the revitalization and preservation of endangered languages by providing accessible and innovative tools and resources.

4. Strategies and Activities:

   • Develop an online platform that offers a range of language learning resources, including interactive lessons, tutorials, and multimedia content.
   • Collaborate with language experts, linguists, and community members to create accurate and comprehensive language learning materials.
   • Foster community engagement and ownership by involving language speakers and learners in the development and improvement of the platform.
   • Facilitate language exchange programs and virtual communities where learners can practice and interact with native speakers.
   • Promote the integration of technology, such as mobile applications and voice recognition, to enhance language learning experiences.
   • Organize workshops, conferences, and events to raise awareness about the importance of language revitalization and the platform's resources.

5. Intermediate Outcomes:

   • Increased accessibility to language learning materials and resources for language communities.
   • Improved language proficiency and fluency among learners.
   • Strengthened community engagement and pride in the language and cultural heritage.

Our core technology is creating one user-friendly and integrated digital platform to let knowledge holders and language teachers create interactive, conversational language learning experiences.

We have a custom built webapp that allows users to create their own subdomains, or via API to their own site.

We appreciate and leverage the diversity of background, and in particular speakers of different languages, especially indigenous ones. This is seen in the diverse communities and team members we have.

We create policies and practices to provide those of all backgrounds the real opportunity to thrive.

We foster an environment where all languages and views are respected and truly valued. We know we exist to serve people and we view our people as our greatest asset, always.

Depending on the tier, which depends on the number of students, Immersio provides a custom branded subdomain or domain where language instructors can easily create conversational courses, qualify tutors to teach students, and promote their courses to their communities and learners online. The goal is to enable them to expand their instruction online easily. 

To begin we have bootstrapped and made use of government grants and competition funds in order to build out the initial technology and begin some traction with paid pilots. Once it is sufficient to show scalability our plan is to raise investment capital expand. So far we have not taken on any debt or loans. 

We will maintain actively working with indigenous organizations to raise funds for our R&D and support each other, while at the same time we will work toward a scalable B2B SaaS model for modern and other languages. 

The online language market of $14.2 billion USD is expected to double within the next six years.

We have received a creative solutions fund from UBC for our solution, an Indigenous Language Program grants from the First People's Cultural Council, and support from Canada's Investment Readiness program. We have 5 paid pilots and number free pilots to show traction.