Nelsonian Foundation rolls out free AI tools

The Nel­son­ian Foun­da­tion is rolling out three free ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools aimed at tack­ling gaps in ed­u­ca­tion, de­men­tia care and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy across the Caribbean.

Founder Bre­vard Nel­son told Guardian Me­dia the tools, which will be rolled out this month, are de­signed to sup­port teach­ers, care­givers and fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ers while reach­ing peo­ple who may not al­ways have ac­cess to those ser­vices.

The three tools are Caribbean AI Tu­tor, CareAI As­sis­tant and the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Game.

Nel­son ex­plained that the Sep­tem­ber roll­out co­in­cides with the start of the new school term, World Alzheimer’s Month and In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day on Sep­tem­ber 8.

The Caribbean AI Tu­tor is de­signed for stu­dents prepar­ing for Com­mon En­trance, the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment, CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions. Rather than sim­ply pro­vid­ing an­swers, the sys­tem us­es prompts and hints to guide stu­dents through prob­lems.

The plat­form is free and avail­able to more than 2,100 schools across 19 Caribbean coun­tries. It al­so in­cludes dash­boards to track stu­dent progress.

Nel­son said stu­dent feed­back, in­clud­ing in­put from Form Four stu­dents at St Mary’s Col­lege, helped shape the tu­tor.

The need for ad­di­tion­al sup­port comes as stu­dents con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges in key sub­jects. For the May and June 2026 CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions, the math­e­mat­ics pass rate was 42 per cent, while Eng­lish A record­ed an 80 per cent pass rate among more than 118,000 can­di­dates.

The sec­ond tool, CareAI As­sis­tant, fo­cus­es on de­men­tia care­givers.

Nel­son de­vel­oped the plat­form af­ter en­gag­ing with glob­al Alzheimer’s or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as lo­cal care homes and as­so­ci­a­tions. The sys­tem pro­vides on­board­ing, six care cat­e­gories, care log­ging, AI rec­om­men­da­tions, alerts and an­a­lyt­ics, along­side care­giv­er well­ness check ins and a voice com­pan­ion.

It is al­so de­signed to iden­ti­fy pat­terns that may re­quire at­ten­tion, in­clud­ing de­clin­ing ap­petite, in­creased ag­i­ta­tion, or med­ica­tion non-ad­her­ence.

Where med­ica­tion-re­lat­ed con­cerns arise, the sys­tem di­rects care­givers to con­sult a physi­cian rather than at­tempt­ing to re­place med­ical care.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion es­ti­mat­ed that 57 mil­lion peo­ple were liv­ing with de­men­tia glob­al­ly in 2021.

The third ini­tia­tive is the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Game, a turn-based sim­u­la­tion de­signed to teach fi­nan­cial de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Play­ers work with a re­al­is­tic Caribbean pay slip that in­cludes de­duc­tions such as Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme con­tri­bu­tions, the health sur­charge and PAYE. The game cov­ers 10 Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions and in­cludes ver­sions for stu­dents and adults.

A Fi­nan­cial Free­dom Score mea­sures fi­nan­cial re­silience rather than fo­cus­ing on­ly on net worth.

Nel­son, whose late fa­ther, El­ton Nel­son, was a for­mer prin­ci­pal of Holy Sav­iour An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School and was known for cre­at­ing Com­mon En­trance and SEA prac­tice tests, al­so has ex­pe­ri­ence in fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

He de­scribed the three tools as part of a broad­er ef­fort by the Foun­da­tion to use tech­nol­o­gy to ad­dress prac­ti­cal needs.

“These are just three of the so­lu­tions we have built that tie back to the Foun­da­tion’s mis­sion,” Nel­son said, “to use tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port the peo­ple who help oth­ers teach­ers, care­givers and fi­nan­cial ad­vi­sors and to reach vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who can’t al­ways ac­cess hu­man sys­tems, with­out let­ting cost be the rea­son they go with­out.”

The Foun­da­tion is fund­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the tools and is work­ing with schools, spon­sors, care homes and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing Ro­tary In­ter­na­tion­al, to sup­port the roll­out.

Nel­son al­so in­di­cat­ed that more ini­tia­tives are be­ing de­vel­oped.

“We would con­tin­ue to help where we can, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” he said.

“There is more com­ing, but the stan­dard stays the same: built for the per­son first, and free for the peo­ple who need it.”