Today marks International Women’s Day, when women and men across the globe come together to celebrate women’s achievements and to advocate for continued opportunity.
At Educate!, we believe opportunity is only possible when youth have access to an education that prepares them for life after graduation. This basic right is one that alludes tens of millions youth around the globe and is a particularly significant challenge for girls.
Read MoreIn the small village in Eastern Uganda where George grew up, it costs about $4 per year to attend school. But after his father passed away, George’s family could no longer afford the school fees and he was forced to leave school when he was only 13 years old.
Read MoreEducate! will be featured in Al Jazeera English’s televised documentary series, Rebel Education, as one of six institutions across that globe that is breaking the mold and creating a radically new vision for 21st century education. Our episode is airing on the 23rd of January.
Read MoreEducate! partnered with Uganda’s National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC) and the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sport (MoES) to host our 2nd Annual Global Conference. The theme of this year’s event was “Experience the Reform: Skills Based Education for Sustainable Development”.
Read MoreWe're proud to announce that Educate! has been recognized at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting.
Our new commitment affirms our intention to continue scaling our proven experienced-based education model to 550 schools and more than 190,000 students in Uganda by the end of 2018, while also preparing to expand to an additional African country in 2019. This new Commitment aligns with our Vision for 2024 to impact one million youth annually across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering them with the skills they need to solve poverty for themselves and their communities.
We're honored to share that Educate! was cited by Bill Gates in his speech for the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa.
In his moving speech Mr. Gates said: "A good education is the best lever we have for giving every young person a chance to make the most of their lives. In Africa, as in the U.S., we need new thinking and new educational tools to make sure that a high-quality education is available to every single child. In Uganda, young innovators at an NGO called Educate! are helping high schools prepare young people for the workplace by teaching students how to start their own business."
Read MoreRecently released as a continuation of the Millions Learning project, the new Millions Learning case studies provide an in-depth look at 12 of the programs and policies explored in the report. Educate!'s case study highlights the most important lessons learned from the Brookings Institution's exploration of our organization. Specifically, Educate! is noted for our strategy of designing for massive scale from the start, our deep commitment to rigorous monitoring and evaluation, and our high-level partnerships with Ministries of Education to reform entire education systems.
Read MoreEducate! is featured in a new industry-defining report from the Brookings Center for Universal Education. Millions Learning seeks to understand the crucial factors driving major improvements in educational outcomes around the world, distilling lessons learned from case studies of Educate!, Pratham, Room to Read, Sesame Workshop, and other leading organizations. The Millions Learning project specifically focuses on education innovations that can be implemented efficiently, effectively, and sustainably on a large scale. Out of over 100 potential cases, Educate! was chosen as one of only 14 solutions to become a detailed case study for the Millions Learning report.
Read MoreEducate! is thrilled to announce a monumental opportunity to reach more youth than ever before. This year we are launching in our second country: Rwanda. Through our education reform efforts, we will impact the education of every secondary student across the nation-- that’s 215,000 youth annually. This expansion is a major milestone toward sustainably impacting youth livelihoods through education systems change.
Read MoreEducate!'s team in Makindye, Uganda shared this poem with their teammates on International Women's Day:
Read MoreThis month, Educate!’s Director of Policy and Partnerships, Maggie Appleton, is attending the 60th Annual Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Conference. The CIES conference is the premier global education event, focusing on fostering cross-cultural understanding, scholarship, academic achievement, and societal development to address education policy and implementation issues in developing countries.
Read MoreAn important report from Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) details how the odds are stacked against youth around the world, and includes several mentions of Educate!'s proven solution!
Did you know that in the next 10 years over 1 billion young people will enter the global job market? There are a record number of young people alive today—nearly 1.8 billion – and 85 percent of these young people live in developing and emerging economies and fragile states. Nearly one third of these young people are not in school, employment, or training.
Read MoreWe are excited to share that Educate! was selected as one of the Global Innovation Fund’s inaugural investments.
The Global Innovation Fund (GIF) is a new fund backed by the US Agency for International Development, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, Omidyar Network and other industry leaders. Educate! was one of only eight organizations selected out of over 2,000 applications as an inaugural investment.
Read MoreAll my life, I had admired accountants and wished to be like them one day. But after graduating from high school, I had lost hope that I could go to university to continue with my studies because I couldn’t pay the school fees. My dad told me he could not manage to pay millions of shillings every semester. Despite this, I was determined to achieve my dream, so I searched for a job that would allow me to save for university. I believed that with education I could move mountains.
Read MoreNext month, Educate! will launch our program expansion in Northern Uganda. This post-conflict area is the most impoverished region of Uganda – the poverty rate, at 43.7%, is nearly twice as high as the next-poorest region of Uganda, and more than two times the national average. After 23 years of conflict, two million people in Northern Uganda were uprooted from their homes and over 20,000 youth were abducted.
Read MoreIn honor of Educate!’s 2015 WISE Awards win, the World Innovation Summit on Education (WISE) produced a short video explaining the program’s model and impact.
Read MoreLast week, Educate!’s co-founders-- Executive Director Boris Bulayev and Global Director of Programs Angelica Towne-- were in Doha, Qatar accepting the 2015 WISE Award, the pre-eminent global education award.
Educate! is a 2015 WISE Award Winner, and Boris and Angelica had the opportunity to present Educate!’s award-winning model to Summit attendees, as well as participate in a panel on the importance of skills-based education for youth and how to prepare a generation of leaders and entrepreneurs.
Read MoreWhen Jane begins to describe her first teaching job at Mbogo High, her whole face lights up. Her love for the girls that she taught and the impact she made on them becomes evident. An all-girls school, Mbogo High served as a platform for Jane to grow into a strong teacher and advocate for female empowerment within the education system.
Read MoreHere’s some good news: a new Pew Research Center survey has found that people in major Sub-Saharan African nations are feeling more optimistic about the future than many others around the world.
“A median of 60% across the nine countries surveyed say their economy is going to improve in the next 12 months, and 56% believe the next generation will be better off financially than their parents. This is a much higher level of optimism than expressed by many others around the world.”
Read MoreStephen Ogwang, an Educate! Mentor and businessman, just oozes charm. With a smile to kill and confidence to spare, he welcomes us into the Police Barracks in Nsambya, Kampala. This is where he’s set up shop; his brightly colored MTN Mobile stand among the uniforms, armed trucks and housing for police personnel. Although it may seem like an unusual place to conduct business, Stephen explains that his location is a part of his carefully-crafted strategic business plan to address a community need.
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