Mission and Strategy
Mission: To educate and empower the next generation of socially responsible leaders in Africa.
Vision: Educate! envisions an Africa in which all students are prepared to better their communities and develop solutions to the challenges facing their continent.
Strategy: In Uganda 50% of the population is under the age of 15. There are critical challenges facing youth: poverty, violence, disease, and environmental degradation. There will not be sustainable solutions to these issues without a new generation of leaders prepared to create and lead those solutions. What we have observed is the tremendous passion among youth to become the leaders who will solve these problems. But whereas in the developed world there is a system for developing leadership talent, there is no real analogue in Uganda. What is more, the current rote-memorization based education system stifles creativity and passion such that youth graduate and can recite the regions of Germany, but are not prepared to tackle the serious challenges facing their communities. Youth need the right knowledge, guidance, and mentorship – truly a quality education – to unlock their potential. That is where we come in.
Educate! helps youth transform their enthusiasm into action. We want to prove that the youth of today can solve the greatest challenges Uganda is facing. Schools, companies, organizations, and the government have jumped behind this vision.
Educate!: CHANGING LIVES, TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES
Educate!’s Solution
Educate! created a model of education that develops young leaders and entrepreneurs in Africa who will solve the greatest problems facing their communities. The curriculum is focused on the skills and experience students need to find solutions to poverty, violence, disease, and environmental degradation. The teachers are mentors who build powerful relationships that give youth confidence to lead change. And the classroom is the community itself where the Educate! students start initiatives that solve the greatest challenges facing their communities. Today, Educate! is empowering 1,400 high-school aged youth at 24 partner high schools across Uganda, and developing a model of education that can be applied universally.
“[Educate!] inspires students to do something for themselves by creating a job but also for others by helping their communities. It’s a real sense of empowerment.” -Educate! Mentor
Educating and empowering Africa’s future leaders
Educate! is collaborating with the National Curriculum Development Center and the UN’s International Labour Organisation to write the social entrepreneurship topic of the new national A level entrepreneurship curriculum. The new A level entrepreneurship curriculum will be piloted in 2011 and rolled out to 45,000 youth annually in 2012 and 2013. The social entrepreneurship curriculum will be taught in term 3 of Senior 5, and will include a practical component in which students actually start a business or community initiative.
Method
Educate!’s highly-qualified Ugandan teachers, who are called Mentors, teach a trendsetting leadership curriculum to teams of 15-20 high school students, called Educate! Scholars, at 24 partner schools across the country. As part of the curriculum, Educate! Scholars start a business or community initiative to solve a problem in the community. Educate! works with a diverse range of Scholars at the most underprivileged, rural schools to wealthy boarding schools in the capital, Christian and Muslim schools, boys schools and girls schools. Each Mentor works with teams of Scholars at four partner schools.
The curriculum is taught for two hours once per week and Scholars spend time outside of the classroom each week with the Mentor creating their enterprises and initiatives in the community. After the two-year curriculum, both Scholars and Mentors join a strong nationwide alumni program to provide access to continued support and resources as Scholars scale their ventures and build careers as entrepreneurial leaders.
“I believe in myself and my dreams. I now have the courage to advocate for what I want. I’m making my own goals and learning how to achieve them,” Said an Educate! Scholar at Hamdan Girls Muslim School.
Results
Educate! students created over 100 businesses and community initiatives as part of the Educate! program. The Educate! students have directly impacted over 15,000 lives and created millions of shillings in value for their communities. The students Educate! works with go on to empower many others – we call this exponential empowerment.
“As an Educate! Scholar I have a chance to make a difference” -Educate! Scholar at Mbale High School.
Examples of Success:
Lillian Aero founded the Namugongo Good Samaritan Project, which has trained 36 HIV/AIDS affected widows to make jewelry and organized a cooperative so they have access to markets for their product. She has
changed the lives of 36 women who now have a source of income. Those women will likely go on to positively impact others, demonstrating exponential empowerment at its finest. Lillian’s inspiration and encouragement came largely from the Educate! curriculum and her experience with her Educate! mentor.
Philip Kulubya is an Educate! Scholar who mobilized his school to raise money and food worth over $2,350 to support a literacy center for vulnerable youth in a nearby slum.
George William Bakka is an Educate! Scholar who started a microfinance organization called Angel Financial Investments. George William raised capital to start the organization, and now gives out loans to other students who are starting businesses. George believes that access to capital, and therefore the opportunity to lift oneself out of poverty, should be available to even the poorest of the poor.
Scholars in Hoima, Uganda, with the help of their Mentor, Solomon Kayiwa, lobbied the local government to donate 20,000 tree seedlings. The Scholars mobilized the community to plant the 20,000 tree seedlings to defend against deforestation.
Daniel Okurut, Educate! Scholar, started a social enterprise that manufactures and sells energy efficient stoves to reduce the use of firewood and charcoal, thus curbing deforestation. Daniel learned to make the stoves by reading a book in his local library.