A recent episode of the My EdTech Life podcast featured Dieumerci (Dieum) Christel, an inspiring 25-year-old entrepreneur who is on a mission to transform education through his app, Enlight. Dieum has an incredible backstory - he was born in a refugee camp in Tanzania to Congolese parents and spent the first 13 years of his life living in refugee camps.
Despite the challenges of growing up in the camps, Dieum recognized that all children have talent and potential. He was motivated to find opportunities to tap into his own potential, which led his family to immigrate to the U.S. when he was 13. While Dieum was eager to take advantage of educational opportunities in America, he became disengaged and disappointed with the traditional education system he experienced. He noticed that many students, like his artistic friend who was made to feel stupid in school, were disengaged. After two of his friends dropped out of high school, Dieum was inspired to do something to improve education.
Dieum began talking to teachers on Reddit, surveying 500 to understand their perspective. He discovered that most teachers genuinely care about their students but struggle to build strong connections and meet their individual needs with overloaded classrooms. Dieum started creating student profiles for teacher’s pro bono to help them better understand their students. This experience revealed that education has not evolved because it does not understand its audience - the students.
Dieum realized that if teachers could understand their students as well as companies like Instagram and Google understand their users, they could create more engaging learning experiences. He worked with over 400 teachers to identify four key things they want to continuously learn about students: who they are, if they are mentally ready to learn, how to improve their experience, and how to improve as an educator.
This insight led Dieum to develop Enlight App on the premise that education cannot evolve without knowing its audience. The app allows teachers to easily build comprehensive student profiles over time through weekly 5-minute surveys. Students can share their interests, needs, mindsets and more through interactive questions. Enlight transforms survey data into actionable insights through student profiles, class profiles showing commonalities, and “Sparks,” which reveal student trends.
This continuous understanding empowers teachers to personalize instruction and connections with students. It also provides real-time data to enable responsive improvements instead of delayed feedback. Students benefit by getting a voice, learning about peers, and feeling understood and valued. Enlight even builds teacher profiles so students can relate to them as people. Through understanding, Enlight seeks to nurture every student’s talent and potential.
Dieum is enthusiastic about scaling the positive impact of teachers who cared to see and encourage him, like Mrs. Klemper and Mrs. Strand. He is proud to have collaboratively developed Enlight over three years to meet real needs. Though just a preview of the app’s capabilities was covered, its potential is clear. Enlight is poised to revolutionize how teachers understand their students on an ongoing basis in order to engage them and help them thrive. Dieum Christel’s journey shows that with vision and perseverance, young entrepreneurs can transform education.
Listen or watch the full episode at https://www.myedtech.life/enlight/
