Barcelona-based Learnlife is on a mission to positively change the world of learning by empowering individuals, schools, and governments with a new learner-centred paradigm that focuses on personal and purpose-inspired learning.
Most would agree that the educational system is in need of major changes. By 2030, it’s predicted that 800 million people could be displaced by automation and 65% of today’s youth will need to find or create work in areas that do not yet exist. In an ever-changing world where people need to continually hone new skills, lifelong learning leads to a heightened sense of personal fulfilment and happiness, as well as increased employability.
The organization, founded in 2017 by Christopher Pommerening, Dr. Stephen Harris and Blair MacLaren, has now raised a €3.1 million seed funding round led by BPO Capital, a vehicle of Benjamin Otto.
Learnlife’s open ecosystem to spread a new, lifelong learning paradigm comprises a digital platform and physical hubs. Through this hybrid approach, Learnlife’s ambition is to empower 100 million learners and 100,000 schools by 2030, enabling them to integrate innovative learning elements into their own projects.
Learnlife will use the funding to grow its community of innovative educators and changemakers from around the world and accelerate the collaborative research and development of its new learning paradigm. The funding will also be used to open learning innovation hubs in order to explore the new learning paradigm. The 1,200 m2 pilot hub was inaugurated in Barcelona in April, and will be followed by the first African hub which will launch in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2020.
Learnlife’s first learning innovation hub in Barcelona has already attracted over 500 family visits. The Barcelona hub already comprises a full time and afternoon enrolment of over 70 learners accompanied by 24 learning guides, experts, and mentors from different professional sectors.
“We are on an exciting journey to create a new learning paradigm for anyone in the world,” said Christopher Pommerening, founder and CEO of Learnlife. “There is a technological revolution that is changing our lives on a daily basis and our education systems are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. We need to innovate learning and evolve continuously to stay relevant and ensure the next generations can have a healthy, happy and sustainable future.”
“By focusing on personal learning driven by purpose and passions – exploring new competencies and enabling learners to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence – our learners are able to prepare themselves and adapt to whatever the future will bring,” added Pommerening. “We believe that collaborative learning communities will become the problem-solving champions in a world where agility, creativity and social innovation will be needed in order to solve future challenges.”
“There is a huge opportunity to innovate learning to ensure that it is meaningful, motivating and enriching for each individual,” said Dr. Stephen Harris, co-founder and Chief Learning Officer at Learnlife. “The funding is enabling our research team to explore and develop the elements that form the different components of sustained educational change. These elements – which are explored in our hubs before being published on our digital platform – arise from an aggregation of research and global best practices in collaboration with international learning innovators. In their entirety, they provide an innovation roadmap and practical steps for driving positive change within any school or organisation around the world.”
