WGI

About WGI

WGI began with a single question: What if every child on Earth could learn to read? In 2014, 14-year-old Chance Wilson noticed that many of his classmates at a Baton Rouge middle school couldn’t read or write. He decided to do something about it. What started as the Wilson Global Initiative—a local nonprofit offering peer-led tutoring—has since become a global literacy movement. Over the past decade, WGI has launched grassroots programs in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, and formed partnerships with global brands like GE, Coca-Cola, and HBO. Our reach has spanned continents—but our mission has stayed the same: universal literacy. Today, our nonprofit work continues as WGI Worldwide Philanthropies. At the same time, we’re preparing to launch our for-profit arm, WGI Interactive LLC, to build game-changing education technology—starting with Lyra, an AI-powered literacy platform designed to reach the most learners, at the deepest level, across the world. Our next goal is our boldest yet: Teach one billion children to read and write. Through epic storytelling, immersive gameplay, and the science of reading, we’re reimagining how the world learns.

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