Welcome to AOK Basic Skills!
Support in ESL, Education, Family Nutrition
& Building Independent Learners through the SDG’s
Hello! I’m John Kirk, a semi-retired teacher based in Portland, Maine, and the director of the AOK Basic Skills Project. It’s my retirement project. AOK began as a volunteer education program in Quito, Ecuador, where I presented free workshops to over 1,000 participants from schools, universities, Red Cross organizations, police departments, Indigenous groups, a provincial ministry for the poor and the Ministry of Health.
Today, AOK is a free, online self-teaching website and with several complete courses and materials for a number of workshops. It’s designed to expand access to basic education, ESL education and nutrition resources around the world. It’s initial priority is basic competence in the topic at hand, but its ultimate goal is to help create independent learners. It is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2-Zero Hunger and 4–Quality Education and its workshop evaluations are designed to motivate the UN to provide related websites.
What AOK Offers
- Independent English Learning
Effective strategies using free online ESL tools, study skills, and CEFR/objective-based self-study - Educational Support for Parents and Students from other countries
Free educational websites for all ages and many countries with Google - Family Nutrition Education
Inexpensive whole-food approaches for food-insecure communities using simple, likes- oriented nutritional categories, cups for measurement, and cook-ahead strategies.
Global Goals & Outreach
AOK workshops are aligned with two of the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030:
- SDG 2: Zero Hunger
- SDG 4: Quality Education
Voluntary and anonymous participant feedback is shared with the UN to advocate for expanded access to related multilingual educational websites. In the past 3 years, the AOK website has welcomed over 34,000 visitors from around the world.
To learn more, please look under the page title “AOK & UN” on this website at “Letter: UN” and “Start”.
Statement of Purpose
This website is maintained as an act of advocacy and protest against the current U.S. administration’s policy decisions that specifically undermine constitutional principles of democracy, the separation of church and state, and international cooperation. AOK stands against policies that:
- Withdraw from critical international agreements that protect the health of the planet, such as the Paris Climate Accords.
- Withdraw from the WHO and oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and prohibit countries that are accepting US aid from promoting such initiatives. On January 7, 2026, a presidential memorandum was signed that initiated the withdrawal from a total of 66 international organizations.
- Seek to close or restrict international aid organizations like USAID.
- Use para military (ICE) domestically in search of unregistered and registered immigrants and in so doing break the first and fourth amendment rights of U.S. citizens by terrifying peaceful neighborhoods and killing them in the plain light of day.
- Use multimedia to hurt democracy. For example, some say the current administration is starting to erase the history of slavery in the US by removing certain books from school libraries and changing National Park signs. Also, by claiming such things as slavery taught “useful skills,” they flood people with confusing ideas. This makes the truth feel like just another opinion, making it harder to tell facts from lies.
- Track people’s behavior. In 2026, the current administration is combining files from the IRS and Social Security into one giant database. The DOGE department says this stops fraud, but critics worry it’s being used to track everyone’s behavior. New rules also use tech to flag people’s citizenship status and monitor their online activity without warrants.
- Contradict public health consensus on issues like vaccine policies and nutrition. This administration has overhauled the Childhood Vaccine Schedule, Reducing Routine Recommendations and down grading some. It has also issued the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030”, where it promotes keeping saturated fat below 10% daily but promotes food choices make that it difficult to do mathematical calculations and easy to go above that mark.
It is hoped that the free educational proposals and workshops offered here can help supplement and expand on the efforts of aid programs everywhere.
Want More?
While AOK is completely free, learners seeking more personalized or advanced instruction can explore additional services through JBK English (https://jbkenglish.com).
John B. Kirk, Director
AOK Basic Skills Project
Portland, Maine