Access
Usable connectivity, devices and language-accessible digital services.
Purpose, people and principles
Inclusion, with people at the centre
A practical beginning can open a longer pathway. The purpose is wider participation, with economic prosperity and well-being together.
See the pathways ↗Quarter Hour is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in Virginia, United States, in 2026.
Vision
A world where every community shapes the digital and artificial intelligence future, connected, skilled, thriving, and represented in its own language and heritage.
Mission
We advance digital access, practical capability, livelihood pathways, and algorithmic representation for immigrants and newcomers, refugees, asylees, internally displaced people, diaspora, and marginalized and BIPOC communities in the United States and internationally to achieve economic mobility and prosperity with well-being.
Our Mandate
Quarter Hour is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization incorporated in Virginia in 2026. What connects all of our strategic lanes is a distinctive operating methodology built on 15-minute capability units, continuous practice loops, and disciplined evidence standards. We work across four connected inclusions: digital access, practical capability, economic pathways, and algorithmic and heritage representation.
We connect people to literacy, English language learning, tutoring, and credential recognition alongside artificial intelligence skills and livelihood support. Our work serves immigrants and newcomers, refugees, asylees, internally displaced people, diaspora and host communities, and marginalized and BIPOC communities in the United States and internationally, including people from displacement hotspots such as Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Congo, and others.
Our heritage and endangered-language mandate operates strictly where culture meets the digital age through community-governed documentation, data sovereignty, digital preservation, and representation inside artificial intelligence systems.
Values
Agency, Not Rescue: Participants co-create programs and evaluate artificial intelligence tools in their own languages rather than serving as passive recipients.
Community Authority: Native speakers and community councils govern their own language data, consent rules, and digital heritage outputs without extraction.
Evidence Before Claims: We publish our measured outcomes and openly document what failed alongside what succeeded across all programs.
Dignity in Every Story: We require informed consent and specific truth in all public communications, rejecting pity framing and stereotypes.
Accountable Systems: Communities test digital and artificial intelligence tools directly and publish findings to hold technology systems accountable.
Separation and Integrity: We operate independently of commercial sales channels and disclose and manage all conflicts of interest in the open.
Four Inclusions
Clear focus areas
Capability
Practical digital and AI learning, with the ability to judge the tools.
Economic
Pathways connecting capability with work, livelihoods and financial participation.
Algorithmic & representational
Community voice in the systems, languages and evidence that shape AI.
Stories and community voice
Participant stories and testimonials come from verified experience, shared with informed consent and reviewed for dignity and safeguarding before publication.
Founding
Incorporated in Virginia
Quarter Hour is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in Virginia in 2026, based in Woodbridge, Virginia. The organization was founded by Asaad Taha (founder and initial director) together with founding directors designate Israa Ali, Salma Ahmed, and Saeeda Dawood.
The organization's leadership and governance, including its disclosure controls, are described on the Leadership and governance page.
We distinguish our purpose and strategic directions from verified outcomes. We report outcomes only when verified by evidence.
Quarter Hour is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in Virginia, United States, in 2026.