In Philadelphia and across the country, memory loss disproportionately affects older Black adults at nearly twice the national rate. A new AI-powered platform called Recall Aid is helping change that.
Designed to support those experiencing dementia and related challenges, the tool uses culturally familiar voices and personalized storytelling to help users recall moments from their lives.
The platform’s creator, Truth Mjumbe, is a professional counseling student at Penn’s Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE). His motivation is deeply personal: from managing epilepsy-related memory gaps to supporting a grandfather living with dementia, these experiences shaped a singular vision to meet a very real community need with advanced AI.
Mjumbe first built Recall Aid as an undergraduate at Morehouse College and has continued refining it at Penn GSE.
“Talking with people in the community gave me insights I could never have gotten on my own,” said Mjumbe. “Penn GSE helped me see how to move from an idea to something that could scale responsibly.”
The project has received $150,000 in funding from Microsoft, positioning it as a promising innovation in health tech, ethical AI, and accessibility. Recall Aid will soon pilot in Philadelphia-area nursing homes.
“My grandfather’s experience with dementia made this urgent,” Mjumbe added. “But it is also about a larger community need. Too many stories disappear before they are told.”