Over 120 million displaced people lack access to quality education. The classrooms they attend look nothing like what any edtech product assumes.
At the end of 2024, 123 million people were forcibly displaced globally. Among them, 49 million were children under 18. For most, school is one of the few stable structures left in their lives - and it is failing them.
“These children are not failing school. School, as it was designed, is failing them.”
UNICEF and UNHCR data show 10–33% of displaced children show clinical signs of depression. Among unaccompanied youth, PTSD rates reach 85%.
Most refugee camps have no reliable connectivity. Traditional e-learning tools simply stop working without it.
Children speak dozens of languages. Most educational software supports 2–3 major ones. None of theirs.
85% of camp teachers are untrained volunteers. A third can't speak any language their students use at home.
34 features across AI tutoring, live translation, teacher tools, student tracking, and offline infrastructure — all free, forever.
Upload any document or photograph of a textbook page. The system translates the content conceptually into the student's language and generates a full lesson summary with follow-up questions.
A personal adaptive tutor for every student. Responds using the Socratic method, adjusts explanation depth to the student's mastery level, and never shows discouraging feedback. Supports text and uploaded images.
Real-time speech transcription and per-student translation during lessons. No lag. No internet. No extra hardware beyond a microphone.
All 34 capabilities
UNHCR Baseline - No AI
$1,051
OptiLearn - Full AI
~$200
OptiLearn saves $851 per student - with a full AI tutor, live translation, and offline operation.
The UNHCR baseline has no AI at all. OptiLearn runs on the hardware already being donated to refugee camps by Google, IRC, Lenovo, and Close the Gap.
Designed for refugee classrooms, but the barriers it removes are shared across hundreds of millions of students in rural, under-resourced, and language-diverse schools worldwide.
No IT department. No cloud accounts. No ongoing fees. Just a laptop, a router, and OptiLearn.
Download OptiLearn and run the setup script. It installs the AI model, builds the curriculum index, and configures the server. On Windows, double-click OptiLearn.bat. First launch takes a few minutes. Every launch after that takes seconds.
Supports Windows (.exe) and macOS (.app)Enable a WiFi hotspot on the teacher's laptop or plug in a $15 travel router. Students connect from any device. OptiLearn announces itself on the network and a QR code gets every student connected in under a minute.
Works with any phone, tablet, or laptopThe teacher creates student accounts from the dashboard. Each student gets a PIN. They enter it once and stay logged in for 30 days. No email. No password. No app to install.
30-day sessions, zero frictionStudents open the AI Tutor, upload material to Translate & Learn, join a Live Quiz, or follow the lesson in their language through Live Class. The teacher watches the dashboard and checks progress in real time.
All AI features run locally - no internet neededSession history, progress data, quiz results, and downloaded notes persist on the teacher's laptop. Student records export as encrypted files and import onto any other OptiLearn installation.
Encrypted student data portabilityOptiLearn is not a wrapped chatbot. It is a full production system built around the specific operational realities of offline classrooms: unreliable hardware, multilingual input, low-literacy users, and zero tolerance for data loss.
Fully open source under the MIT license. NGOs, school systems, governments, and individual teachers can deploy it, modify it, and share it without cost or permission.
We do not charge. We do not collect data. The server runs in the classroom and data stays there.
MIT License - Free to use, modify, and deploy.
1 / 28
Hear from educators running multilingual, resource-constrained classrooms - the same conditions OptiLearn was built for.
“Our country is one where natural disasters happen all the time. Because of that, we also have to close schools constantly. A teacher can just teach them through the app, offline. I feel that this app will be very helpful in such situations.”
School Teacher
Janadhipathi Vidyalaya, Mahara
Sri Lanka
“Through OptiLearn, not only for the children but also for us, to clearly explain things to students over and over again, and to explain examples well, I think it is very valuable.”
School Teacher
Janadhipathi Vidyalaya, Mahara
Sri Lanka
Every architectural decision is traceable to documented conditions in refugee and displacement education.
Primary source for displacement figures: 123 million forcibly displaced, 49 million children.
VisitDocumented 51 languages in a single school district; two-thirds of lessons required multiple languages.
VisitPupil-to-teacher ratio data: average 1:85, as low as 1:130 in lower grades.
VisitAverage unit cost of $1,051 per refugee student for a system with no AI or adaptive support.
Visit10–33% of displaced children show clinical signs of depression. PTSD rates among unaccompanied youth reach 85%.
Visit85% of camp teachers are unqualified volunteers with no formal qualifications or trauma-informed training.
VisitRecent data on ongoing displacement escalation driven by conflict and climate crises.
VisitGoogle.org gave 25,000 Chromebooks and a $5.3 million grant to German aid groups, for language courses and educational tools.
VisitSmartphones donated to Kakuma and Kalobeyei, home to 196,666 refugees, so teachers could run digital learning tools on shared devices.
VisitRefurbished device donations to settlements matching OptiLearn's hardware profile.
VisitOffline multilingual computer lab deployments for refugee children in Lebanon.
VisitClimate-driven displacement data contributing to the global 123 million figure.
Visit
