Duolingo Inc. published a report detailing the effects of social impact efforts in the city and globally. The largest of these efforts locally is an annual investment of $1 million to further early childhood education in the city.
Kendra Ross, Duolingo's (NASDAQ:DUOL) head of social impact, joined the company in 2021. At the time, she said the company was having conversations about how it could better support the community and that "a lot of conversation around early childhood education was starting to come up."
"This was during the pandemic, when early childhood education, which was already kind of underfunded, was pretty much decimated," Ross said. "A lot of child care programs closed and never reopened and its been hard to retain teachers."
Beginning in October, Duolingo pledged the annual $1 million investment. Funds from this investment were used in different ways by nine separate organizations. For example, one began offering all teachers health benefits, while others have increased pay. Since this investment, Ross said the number of available local child care slots has grown by 12%.
"We're not taking full credit for that, there are other things happening in the ecosystem at the same time, but our support has added to that," Ross said. "In addition to the funds, we also provide business and professional development to our partners through the Early Excellence Project."
Ross said Duolingo intends to expand this program.
"What we're looking at now is 'how do we support families who don't have their children in traditional care,' whether it be that they're on a waitlist or they maybe just culturally don't believe in putting their young children in child care. They still need support and early childhood education," Ross said. "One of the ways that we thought about doing that lately is we became a corporate sponsor for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library of Pittsburgh. … We've committed for the next two years to sponsor families in four ZIP codes around our headquarters and maker sure every child, zero to five, if the family registers, get access to free books. Every month they are shipped a book to their home for five months."
In addition to the education spending, Duolingo invests in local artists. This program began when Duolingo first moved into its office space in East Liberty and a mural was replaced on the building.
"The mural that was on the building depicted children from the community, and the community was not consulted," Ross said. "There was an outcry about it and Duolingo being new to the neighborhood felt like it was their responsibility to respond in a right way."
First, the company put up a new mural, which remains on the building. However, that mural was not painted by a native Pittsburgher, which led to further discussions between the company and the community on how Duolingo can uplift local artists. From these conversations, Duolingo invested $150,000 in public artists beginning in 2020.
Globally, Duolingo has invested heavily in providing scholarship opportunities to immigrants and refugees and has partnered with several international nonprofits. Ross said that these efforts have influenced local ideas, as the immigrant population in Pittsburgh has grown.
"We're a global company and we will always have that global reach, but we have local ties and we let our local work inform our global work and vice versa," Ross said.
