Virtually Verbal: Houston Teen-Led Nonprofit Pioneers Free Language Learning

Stretching over more than 25 countries, tutoring over 200 students, Virtually Verbal is the only organization of its kind to offer free language classes taught by a private tutor and is founded and run by a group of Awty International School students.

According to Forbes, the number of language learners worldwide has steadily increased, with an estimated 1.5 billion people actively learning a foreign language. The rise of language apps such as Duolingo, Babbel, and Rosetta Stone in the last decade have made language-learning accessible, but the young founders noticed a gap in high-quality personalized education. Virtually Verbal aims to make one-on-one tutoring for languages not only financially feasible, but to create a lasting impact on the individuals who are tutored, who in-turn are empowered to give back to their larger communities. 

Virtually Verbal founder, Aarya Gorakhle, used her Indian American connections at home by utilizing WhatsApp group chats to network the organization’s services to family and mutual friends to learn foreign languages such as French, Spanish, and German. After Aarya went to college, Tanishka Padhye took over as director, recruiting Awty students Michael Hren and Akanbeile Abagi, who felt immediately drawn to the vision of the organization, recognizing the value of languages in transcending geographic, racial, ethnic, and national identities as students expanded their skill sets for schooling, relationships, and the workforce.

Driven by their own passion for language learning, they steadily grew the organization to include more than 25 countries taught by 12 dedicated Houston area high-schoolers offering Zoom classes in more than 5 languages, in various levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced, to anybody who is interested - free of charge. The team has hand-crafted their own curriculum in making sample-slideshows and outlines for their tutors but encourages the tutors to be independent as each language and learning style of students is varied.

A Verbal tutor meets with young women in India through partnership with Indian organization, Isaksham. (Photo courtesy of Virtually Verbal)

Virtually Verbal directly impacts communities around the world. Across the globe, their partnership with Indian nonprofit Isaksham aims to address the systematic educational inequality that women in India experience by opening additional opportunities for education, employment, and communication by language learning. Dedicated to educating young women, Isaksham meaning “I am capable” is fueled by the idea that if women gain greater autonomy through education, the result is lasting social change not only amongst women, but among their families, communities, and culture.

According to Isaksham, of the young women in the age group of 16-24 years, in rural Bihar, a large state in India, 88 percent of women drop out of formal education. Virtually Verbal is making leaps and bounds abroad, but they stay steadfast in their dedication to positively impacting the community they grew up in - Houston. In a partnership with KIPP ISD, which primarily serves minority and economically disadvantaged students in Houston, Virtually Verbal tutors KIPP ISD students in English who speak another primary language at home. By offering free, individualized support in English language skills, Virtually Verbal is helping these students thrive academically and bridging linguistic barriers to success. 

Virtually Verbal officers host a meeting at Awty that promotes cultural and linguistic diversity for people interested in the organization. (Photo courtesy of Virtually Verbal)

As a high schooler, it is difficult to manage school, family commitments, and extracurriculars, but the team at Virtually Verbal dedicates themselves whole-heartedly. The team attributes a lot of their growth to their time at Awty; they describe it as a great environment for accomplishing a goal and a mission as long as you are driven. As being more than a bullet point on a college application, running a successful nonprofit as a high-schooler requires a commitment that teens often don’t have the means for, but these high schoolers demonstrate that with merely an idea, passionate cause, and hard work, growth is exponential. The teens at Virtually Verbal dedicate hours of work not only to tutoring, but administrative tasks, planning meetings, and funding.

In the Awty community, the team has hosted three fundraisers, such as a bake sale in which they pay back contributors for food and have generated over 600 dollars in profit. While analyzing consumer output for a donut versus a brownie may seem finite, the team has learned various business and nonprofit lessons in market-place trends, managing time, advertising, and organizational bureaucracy. Looking towards the future, one of Virtually Verbal’s goals is to gain 501c3 status for fiscal sponsorship in certain programs and gain crowd funding across various platforms besides organizations such as Go-Fund-Me and bake sales. Additionally, the board is hoping to gain enough profits to purchase booking software for classes to expand beyond the Zoom platform.

Awty students learn about Virtually Verbal. (Photo courtesy of Virtually Verbal)

Michael Hren, a junior at Awty International School, who started his time at Virtually Verbal as a French tutor, summarized his experience in one word: “fulfilling.” Michael describes the challenge of “setting up a time” across international time zones, sometimes staying up late into the morning for a late-night class, but he spoke passionately about how rewarding and eye-opening it is to work with people from all over the world.

One of his students, Ankit, a college student in India, came across Virtually Verbal to learn French. Michael, in turn, learned about Ankit’s life, culture, and struggles that he never would have known otherwise. Michael describes how he learned about Ankit’s life growing up in a village in rural India, and his struggle to gain admission and financial funding to study abroad, Michael exclaimed that just hearing about how people live is entirely different from “interacting with the person on a weekly basis” and it uncovers a “whole new side to discovering how people live.”