Dear Friends,

Our 2025 Annual Report: building connectivity that lasts

2025 was a defining year for Hello World.

Against a challenging global funding landscape, we made difficult decisions, adapted how we work and strengthened the foundations for our future. At the same time, the need for our work has never been more urgent. Across the communities we serve, we see time and again that connectivity is not a luxury: it is essential to education, livelihoods and opportunity.

During the year, we took an important step forward in our approach, shifting from direct delivery towards a model centred on partnership, training and community ownership. Our goal is not simply to deliver connectivity but to equip communities and local partners with the skills, tools and capacity to manage and sustain it for the long term.

Highlights from 2025

During the year, Hello World:

• Connected more than 10,000 people across new communities in Uganda
• Advanced the transition of 85 Hello Hubs in Uganda towards full community management;
• Launched the Hello Hub Lite in three Ugandan communities, testing a more affordable and adaptable approach to community connectivity;
• Expanded into a new refugee setting through a community-led delivery model and a new local partnership; 
• Provided digital skills training to 1,575 people, including 1,375 children and 200 teachers;
• Supported partners and communities in Uganda and Nigeria to adopt and deploy the Hello World model, alongside ongoing training and capacity building; and
• Strengthened our global recognition and partnerships, including being selected for the Giga Accelerator Programme, which is helping to address the global school connectivity challenge in hard-to-reach communities, and receiving the MIT Solve Andan Prize for Refugee Inclusion for the fourth consecutive year.

Evidence of lasting change

In 2025, we also completed our largest-ever impact survey. Nearly 700 people across more than 50 communities shared how access to a Hello Hub had affected their lives:

• 96% said using a Hub had improved their quality of life;
• 93% reported that the Hub had reduced inequality in access to education and technology;
• 99% of parents surveyed said their children were performing better at school as a result of accessing the internet and developing skills at a Hub;
• 86% of schools surveyed reported improved learning outcomes; and
• 60% of users said they had increased their income by applying the digital skills they had gained.

This is what community-led connectivity looks like in practice: not simply access to the internet, but lasting changes in learning, livelihoods and opportunity.

Looking ahead

The progress made in 2025 has laid the foundations for the next phase of Hello World. Our priorities are to:

• train communities, partners and governments to adopt and implement our model;
• scale our school connectivity approach across Uganda and into new East African contexts;
• expand into new refugee and underserved settings through locally rooted partnerships; and
• Share our open-source tools, learning and approach globally, enabling more organisations and communities to benefit.

We believe the internet should belong to everyone. Achieving that means building solutions that are locally owned, globally shared and designed to last.

Read our 2025 Annual Report here to discover what communities, partners and the Hello World team achieved during the year – and how we are building a pathway towards sustainable connectivity at a greater scale.

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