Founding Memo
AI Literacy Foundation
The short version
The AI Literacy Foundation is a Danish voluntary association founded on 27 April 2026. We serve the people who run Denmark and Europe at the working level: teachers, doctors, nurses, public servants, lawyers, accountants, researchers, journalists, small and medium business owners, nonprofit staff, and the people running small institutions without an in-house tech team. We help them understand AI well enough to question it, decide how to use it on their own terms, and stay accountable for the decisions they make with it.
The Foundation will deliver formal training cohorts, AI tool reviews, and public guides under its own name. All of it is free at the point of access. The Foundation puts institutional structure around work Ali Al Mokdad has been doing for years.
The problem
AI adoption is moving fast and unevenly.
Large organizations can hire consultants, run pilots, and build internal capacity. Most people doing important work cannot. The teacher whose school just adopted an AI grading tool. The social worker whose agency now uses an AI risk assessment system. The public hospital administrator who has to explain an automated decision to a patient. The small NGO finance officer trying to figure out whether the AI tool she downloaded is safe to use with donor data. They were not asked. It arrived in their workplace and they were expected to keep up.
Article 4 of the EU AI Act requires every organization using AI to ensure its staff has sufficient AI literacy. That is law in Europe, in force since 2025. Most small organizations have no plan for complying. Commercial providers charge for this. We do not.
This is not a niche concern. It is the AI rollout in everyday Denmark and Europe: the schools, clinics, small businesses, public offices, and libraries that run the country at the working level. The people making these calls were never given the literacy to make them well. That is what we are here to change.
What the Foundation is
The AI Literacy Foundation is a Danish frivillig forening (voluntary nonprofit association), registered with the Danish Business Authority, CVR 46487869. Our registered address is Copenhagen. We have no private owner. No surplus is distributed to founders, board members, or any private party.
We use the word Foundation in our public name to communicate our public-benefit purpose to international audiences. In Danish law, we are an association, not a fond or a stiftelse.
The Foundation was established at a founding general assembly in Copenhagen on 27 April 2026.
What we will do
Three programs in Year 1.
AI Literacy Training
Hands-on AI literacy training delivered in English and Danish. Free for participants. Designed to satisfy Article 4 of the EU AI Act for partner organizations. The training builds on years of AI literacy sessions Ali has delivered for humanitarian organizations, social enterprises, companies, and civil society audiences. The Foundation now structures that work into formal cohorts. We will teach what AI is, where it fails, how to verify its output, how to protect data, and how to use it without causing harm.
AI Tool Reviews
Before a person or a small organization deploys an AI tool, we will review it. We will examine privacy, bias, safety, and human dignity. We will write a short, plain-language report. The organization decides what to do with it. We will charge nothing. For people and organizations that cannot afford a commercial ethics review, we will be the free alternative.
Public Guides
Plain-language guides in English and Danish on AI literacy, the EU AI Act, AI procurement, and responsible AI use in regulated workplaces. The first guides will cover Article 4 obligations for small organizations, how to evaluate an AI vendor's privacy claims, and what to ask before deploying an AI tool in a public service. The guides are open public goods. Free to read, free to share, free to translate.
We will not try to do more than this in Year 1.
Who we are for
We are specific about who we serve. Not organizations. People.
- Nonprofit staff and community workers at small organizations that do not have a tech team or a budget for commercial AI advice.
- Public servants: teachers, school administrators, social workers, nurses, library staff, and others running public services who are increasingly expected to work with AI tools they were never trained on.
- Doctors, nurses, midwives, and clinic staff in public and private healthcare.
- Small and medium business owners, lawyers, accountants, and the people who work for them.
- Researchers, journalists, farmers, community organizers, and anyone doing work that matters whose organization cannot afford a commercial AI consultant.
We do not primarily serve large corporations, technology vendors, or consultancies that can afford commercial AI advisory services.
Where this comes from
Ali Al Mokdad has spent close to two decades building, governing, and writing about the institutions that do hard work in hard places. His career has crossed humanitarian operations across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (with SCI, DRC, IMC, CARE, ACF, NRC, Geneva Call, and parts of the UN and Red Cross systems), digital investment and AI strategy for international organizations, ERP governance at scale, and peer-reviewed policy work on responsible AI and AI diplomacy. He has worked in South Sudan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Niger, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, and Denmark.
While he was doing that work, AI arrived. Not as a distant policy debate, but in the tools his colleagues were using, the decisions they were asked to make, and the vendor conversations happening inside every organization he knew. He watched who got trained on those tools and who did not. The answer was consistent: not the people doing the actual work.
He did not wait for someone else to close that gap. He has delivered AI literacy training and coaching for years, across humanitarian organizations, social enterprises, companies, and civil society audiences. He co-leads the AI working group at NetHope. He publishes peer-reviewed research on responsible AI and AI diplomacy. He has contributed to policy discussions across Europe, the UAE, and the United States.
His book, Quantum Humanitarian, is a bestseller in Denmark and across wider Europe. It traces the future of humanitarian work in a world being reshaped by AI and technology. He hosts Sector Debrief, a podcast that brings humanitarian leaders together to work through what AI actually means for the people doing the work and for the sector itself.
The Foundation exists because AI literacy has become a precondition for honest professional work. Without it, the people who run schools, clinics, courts, small businesses, and public offices cannot tell when an AI tool is making decisions they would not make themselves. That gap is where harm enters. Closing it is not a niche cause. It is how the next decade of European institutional life either holds together or does not.
The Foundation is not invention. It is institutionalization. The training was already happening. The reviews were already happening. The Foundation gives that work bylaws, a CVR number, a public accountability structure, and a commitment to make it free at the point of access for the people who use it.
Past, present, and what comes next
The association is registered. CVR 46487869 is active. Bylaws adopted 27 April 2026. The founding board is in place.
The present. Ali is already doing this work. Training is being delivered. The podcast is running. The research is published. The Foundation provides an institutional home for that existing practice and a public commitment to scale it.
What comes next. A public commitment. These are the six Year 1 positions, stated so they can be verified:
- We will deliver formal AI literacy training cohorts to at least 50 professionals working in Danish institutions in Year 1.
- We will train at least 30 small business owners, nonprofit staff, or independent professionals across Denmark and Europe.
- We will complete independent tool reviews for at least 5 small organizations operating in Denmark or Europe.
- We will publish at least 10 plain-language guides and briefings on AI literacy, EU AI Act compliance, and responsible AI use.
- We will secure a first grant or major partnership.
- We will apply for Ligningslovens §8A status.
We will not accept funding that compromises our independence or ethical limits. We will not take money from any organization whose AI use we have publicly criticized. We will publish annual public accounts.
In the next six months, we will deliver our first five training cohorts, publish two plain-language guides on Article 4 compliance, and complete tool reviews for three small organizations in Denmark.
This is the record against which we ask to be judged.
How to engage
If you are a potential funder, partner, or future board member, write to us.
Ali Al Mokdad
Founder, AI Literacy Foundation
The Foundation is free at the point of access. That is not a slogan. It is how we have structured the work, and it is not negotiable.