Company: Chatterbox
Website: https://www.chatterbox.io/
Founder: Mursal Hedayat and Guillemette Dejean
Business: What does Chatterbox do? The startup is an online language schools that employs and provides training to refugees, helping them to become teachers. The company provides a platform for refugees to be able to demonstrate their potential to connect with companies, helping them to not only re-enter the world of work, but also help to build back up their self-esteem and confidence, which are invaluable.
How does Chatterbox work? The online language learning platform combines AI-powered self-study courses with regular practice. This is alongside native language coaches from the refugee community who have been algorithmically matched.
Through the Chatterbox app, many potential outcomes are possible: for example, aid workers can learn Spanish from medical doctors, etc. This means that refugee coaches have the chance to earn a living and the clients also get to learn too.
For the co-founder of the company, Mursal Hedayat, the mission of the firm is a personal one, having grown up in Kabul but moved as a child to the UK with her family for safety reasons. Her mum, a successful engineer in her own right in Afghanistan had difficult finding employment in the UK. This helped spur Hedayat into action.
