Some of our current projects

Guidance tracker for visually-impaired athletes

Often, visually-impaired athletes from developing nations must rely on volunteers who train with them to guide them. However, volunteers are not always available and this has a huge impact on the athletes’ ability to train.

This innovative, student-led project has been developed from scratch, based on designing and building a simple affordable tracking device that athletes can use to train independently.

Utilizing Raspberry Pi, machine learning and a camera system, the team is working on building a prototype and testing it out with our Paralympic athlete partners.

Our students are creating a better future for disabled athletes in developing countries.

Using education to empower refugees

Turkey hosts millions of refugees from around the world. Many of them are children who need to continue their education, but due to constant relocation either due to parents’ seasonal jobs or placement in other camps, their education process is never recorded.

As a result, when they start in a new school, their teachers find it difficult to place them or know which subjects are lacking. This disrupts their education and impedes their advancement, despite their ability and dreams.

In order to address this oversight, our team has constructed a user-friendly website available in Turkish, Arabic and Pashto where teachers can enter students’ details so that when the student moves on, their next school can help them pick up where they left off, thereby giving these children a chance to build on their hard work and learning.

Our students are creating a better future for refugee children.

VR experiences to enhance freedoms for differently-abled people of all ages.

Imagine a world where the laws of physics don’t apply. A world where you can fly like a bird, ski down a mountain, learn how to surf, navigate a black hole in outer space.

And all this from your armchair, where you are limited only by your imagination.

For people who are restricted in their movements, whether they suffer from fear of public spaces, ME, chronic fatigue syndrome, or are wheelchair bound, VR offers them a chance to explore the world freed from the restrictions placed on them both by gravity and by a society that is not designed for differently-abled individuals.

Our project works within the community to provide VR headsets on loan and free instructions inside users’ homes, bringing the world to them using the power of VR.

Our students are creating a better future for people who are differently abled.

Children with Down-syndrome enhanced learning via computer games

Children with Down Syndrome struggle with learning difficulties, memory and comprehension. Researchers have discovered that certain types of video games have a positive impact on memory impairments associated with Down syndrome. They can increase levels of dopamine, and this increase is connected to better learning capability and improved brain function.

Working with a group of volunteer families, our team has designed a set of simple, specially-designed video games that are educational, but that also raise the level of learning-enhancing chemicals in the brain. The team is gathering data on how the raised levels may be helping the children to learn, analyzing data with the aid of a control group. They hope to publish their findings and contribute to this interesting new field of therapy for children with Down Syndrome.

Our students are creating a better future for children with Down Syndrome.

Book Club

This is a book club with a difference. While we believe that reading is the single most important activity (besides breathing) for young people today, this club seeks to push students beyond the level of thinking expected of them at school.

Via a wide variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, weekly Zoom meetings challenge readers to ask bigger and deeper questions. The purpose of the club is to train students to never take anything for granted, to learn how to ask ‘Why’ rather than ‘what’ or ‘how’, and in this way, instill in them the habit of critical thinking that will hopefully stay with them for the rest of their lives. It is offered at beginners, intermediate and advanced level.

Our book club is creating a better future for our students

Oxbridge Advanced Skill Set

The Oxford Advanced Skill Set is a unique course that has been specially created to train high-ability students to raise their vocabulary level, improve their reasoning and argumentative skills and to train them in the art of writing a persuasive and well-structured university-level essay. It is aimed at students applying to Oxford and Cambridge and is not available to all.

The skills that students will develop over the duration of the course have an added benefit that lasts long after their university applications have been submitted. These same skills will assist students once they begin studying at university in meeting writing and verbal reasoning expected at a top university.

Pre-university prep programs

Often, international students struggle to achieve satisfactory grades at university abroad in their first year. This is mainly due to the different style of teaching and learning in their home-country schools, which does not always prepare them well for Western institution learning styles.

This pre-college preparation course is designed to boost newly-graduated high school students’ ability to create written work to a standard acceptable for a first-year student at a UK or US university.

Designed in collaboration with university professors, the program introduces the student to all the first-year topics and gives them the study skills they need to succeed academically in this demanding course.