India is set to have 500 million cellphone users by 2010, with an increasing number in rural areas. And that makes the cell phone an ideal tool in the battle to empower rural children with their key to get out of poverty – the English language. English is a power language, frequently spoken by the upper classes, and it means better jobs and a better life.

A child learns how to speak English on a cellphone in India.

The MILLEE (Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies) project is a PhD project for Matthew Kam from the Berkeley Institute of Design at the University of California. It uses games played on mobile phones to help kids learn English in rural India.

"A teacher in front of a blackboard is always better," says Urvashi Sahni, whose schools were used for the MILLEE pilot projects. "A real person is always better then a machine. The point is if you don't have that many real persons to go around, then you need a machine."

Urvashi Sahni, an educator in India, believes the use of technology can break the cycle of poverty.

She says there's a severe lack of ability amongst English teachers in government schools. "I can bet you 95% of teachers who are teaching English don't have any English themselves. So you can imagine what kind of English they teach."

And that's if the children get to school at all. About half of school-age children are kept home from school to help with domestic or farm work – so the cell phone could allow them to connect with educational resources when they're away from the classroom.

Schoolchildren in India are highly motivated to learn English.

The cellphone games are based on traditional games played in the village.

So far, two groups of children have been through the English lessons, and the results have been promising. With corporate donations of funds and phones, those involved with the project hope it will continue and expand around the developing world.

"Learning "cat, rat and banana" is not going to change their lives," says Urvashi Sahni. "But I think that's not where this project is going to stop. You have to begin with vocabulary."