AI Kurd (aikurd.org) is an educational platform dedicated to AI education and AI safety researches. It believe the AI revolution shouldn't leave Kurdish speakers behind - so we explain AI tools, technology, and AI Safety clearly, in Kurdish and English. Their mission is simple: give every Kurdish student, teacher, and curious mind the knowledge to use AI well - and to understand how it can built safely. And all of their work are in English and Kurdish languages.
What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?
My main goal is to take my region and world into another level of AI in general and AI Safety especially. I want to build a huge organization to make the next generation AI scientists and can serve the humanity. and I want to reach this by these at the beginning:
- And I created KurdRoom (kurdroom.aikurd.org) to give local learners interactive access to open-source safety resources and tools (especially for university students).
- Running small-scale university meetups and educational sessions in Erbil.
How will this funding be used?
We are requesting $35k dollars to establish the first dedicated AI Safety Hub in Erbil, Iraq, supporting a 4-person. operational team and physical workspace for 12 months:
- $24k - 4 person Local Team: Full-time. for 1 Lead Technical Writer, 1 Video Media Producer, 1 Web Developer, and 1 Community & Workshop Manager.
- $5.5k - Office Space: Dedicated office in Erbil, high-speed fiber internet, generator power backup, and utility costs.
- $3.5k - Production Gear & Local Compute: Camera/lighting upgrades, dedicated local workstation, and cloud GPU credits and safety evaluations.
- $2k - University Workshops & Field-Building: Hosting monthly in-person AI alignment discussions, printing educational booklets, and university outreach events.
Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects
This project is run by two co-founders: - Sharo Saadi Hassan (Co-Founder & Technical Lead): Undergraduate AI student in Erbil focusing on AI Safety, alignment, and mechanistic interpretability. I lead platform development for (aikurd.org) and KurdRoom, technical writing, and research breakdowns.
- Mohammed Hazhar Taha (Co-Founder): Undergraduate AI student in Erbil focusing on AI Safety, focuses on media production, content strategy, editing, and distribution operations. and the other two persons didn't add to the team due to lack of money and a place for our working time.
Track Record:
- Spending $300 AI Kurd, and generating over 200,000+ total views across our educational AI Safety video series.
- Individual AI Safety Reels regularly reach 25k to 80k views, making a strong organic reach efficiency in the region.
- Successfully built and deployed (aikurd.org) and the (kurdroom.aikurd.org) Progressive Web App to serve Kurdish-speaking learners.
What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?
- Primary Failure Risk: Managing technical research, video production alongside full-time university studies could lead to a better intelligence and it would be an experience for a better try and leaves a lot of useful contents behind
-Mitigation & Sustainability: Hosting and operational costs for AI Kurd and KurdRoom are lightweight. Even if video publication output slows down, all translated safety articles, educational resources, and PWA tools will remain permanently open-source and online for the community.
How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?
/$300- $350 total (It came from personal funds to cover initial domain, basic hosting, and video production test runs). We have received no institutional grants or external venture funding to date.