From local servers to global impact: How Learning Upgrade uses AWS to reach millions of learners in need

Every human being has the right to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities—a principle recognized by UNESCO as a universal human right. Yet for millions of learners around the world, this right remains far from reality. According to UNESCO, 251 million children and 99 million illiterate youth, of which 56 percent are women, remain out of school globally. A 2024 Education Report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reveals that 49 percent of the world’s 14.8 million school-aged refugee children—approximately 7.2 million learners—are out of school.

Recognizing this global challenge, Learning Upgrade set out with a bold mission: To make education accessible to all through engaging, digital, and equitable learning. Founded in 1998, Learning Upgrade began as an on-premises platform focused on supporting struggling students with multimedia-rich lessons in math, reading, digital literacy, and life skills. Over time, the platform evolved to serve a wide range of learners, including refugees, migrants, out-of-school youth, adult learners, and women with limited literacy. As the scale and urgency of the need grew, the organization quickly realized that a cloud-based approach would be essential to reach more learners, faster and more efficiently.

Modernizing with AWS to support millions of learners in need

The Learning Upgrade team worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to modernize their platform and ultimately migrated fully to the cloud. This strategic shift empowered them to scale globally, respond faster to new opportunities, and better serve learners in dynamic, resource-constrained environments. By using core AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon CloudFront, and others, Learning Upgrade built a robust, cloud-based platform capable of delivering engaging, high-quality educational content to millions of users across the world.

Since migrating to AWS, Learning Upgrade has served over 3 million students, completed more than 20 million lessons, and expanded its reach to learners in more than 25 countries, including key regions such as the US, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Turkey, and India. Through AWS, Learning Upgrade streamed over 5,000 teaching videos and 80,000 audio clips to learners, making rich, multimedia learning possible anywhere, anytime. The elasticity of the AWS Cloud has allowed the Learning Upgrade team to seamlessly scale operations as demand increases, making sure that every new partnership, classroom, or learner can be supported without delay.

Expanding the reach and preparing for the future with AI

But Learning Upgrade’s mission is far from complete. With millions of displaced and underserved learners still without access to quality education, the organization is now focused on expanding its reach. Over the next 4 years, Learning Upgrade aims to serve 300,000 additional refugee, migrant, and crisis-affected students as part of its UNHCR Global Refugee Forum pledge. In the near term, Learning Upgrade is working toward reaching 75,000 refugee learners within the year—a milestone made achievable through the support of the AWS Education Equity Initiative (EEI).

The EEI is an AWS initiative to expand access to future skills education for underserved learners globally. Amazon is committing up to $100 million in AWS credits and technical expertise to support socially minded organizations develop innovative digital learning solutions that use the cloud and AI technologies.

“The Amazon EEI helps our team fulfill the dream of reaching refugee families globally with life-changing learning. We are seeing the direct impact in children catching up to grade level and entering school, youth qualifying for job training programs, and parents passing English tests for resettlement,” said Vinod Lobo, Learning Upgrade founder and CEO. “It has also given us the opportunity to support the true heroes of this work, our partner refugee-led and refugee-serving organizations that enroll students into our courses.”

For Learning Upgrade, the EEI credits help cover its hosting costs to offer its platform, training, and support at no cost to new refugee-serving organizations—unlocking the opportunity to scale where it’s needed most. Learning Upgrade is also using a portion of these credits to bring the benefits of AI within reach for underserved learners. By integrating services such as Amazon Polly, Amazon Transcribe, and Amazon Bedrock, Learning Upgrade is introducing new AI-driven capabilities, making learning more interactive, inclusive, and personalized. These enhancements are breaking down language and literacy barriers, automating time-intensive tasks like grading and onboarding, and giving teachers actionable insights to better support every learner. These capabilities are currently being rolled out and are expected to be fully available by fall 2025, expanding Learning Upgrade’s ability to serve diverse communities at greater scale.

Conclusion

Learning Upgrade’s journey from an on-premises platform to a global, cloud-powered, AI-enabled learning solution that serves more than 3 million users shows what’s possible when technology and purpose align. With the continued support of AWS, Learning Upgrade is not only expanding access, but also redefining how education is delivered in the most underserved communities.

As more institutions and organizations work to close learning gaps around the world, Learning Upgrade stands as a powerful example of how working with AWS can help organizations go beyond their mission goals, reaching more learners, restoring opportunity, and giving young people around the world a chance to reclaim their right to learn.

If your organization is working to improve access to education, connect with your AWS account team or visit Sales support to learn how AWS can support your mission.