Melissa Baralt

Melissa Baralt (Col ’03 L/M), Natalie Brito (Col ’05 L/M) are members of the winning team in the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bridging the Word Gap Challenge. Along with Ashley Darcy Mahoney of George Washington University, they developed Háblame Bebé, a mobile app designed to reduce the word gap for Hispanic children that promotes Spanish-English bilingualism. The word gap is the difference between the number of words children from low-income families learn compared to children from high-income families. The goal of the challenge was the development of a tool to help parents and caregivers talk and engage more with young children and help close the word gap.