Flipping through the pages of a newspaper one morning, Adeline, a Rwandan secondary student, came across a story which instantly captivated her. The article profiled Esther Mbabazi, the first woman in Rwanda to be certified as a commercial airline pilot. Deeply inspired by Esther’s journey, Adeline soon set her sights on flight school. “Why can’t I be the second?” she wondered.

Educate! is working to create a model of education that is tied to, and directly accountable for, improved life outcomes. We invest deeply in rigorously evaluating, and then innovating and improving upon, our model to ensure that every dollar leads to the maximum impact for the youth we serve. Out of that commitment, Educate! partnered with researchers from UC Berkeley, the World Bank, and Innovations for Poverty Action to conduct a follow-up to our Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in Uganda which measured our impact on students four years after completing the Educate! program.

This May, Educate! had the privilege of participating in an online workshop exploring the design and implementation of mentorship programs. Organized by Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) - a coalition led by the World Bank, the workshop convened a distinguished group of global organizations to share insight and learnings around supporting the world’s young entrepreneurs.

It has been a particularly eventful summer here at Educate!, as we organized not one but two National Student Business Club Competitions in Uganda and Rwanda. The competitions brought together the brightest Clubs in each country for a day of innovation exchange, ingenuity, and of course, friendly competition.  

As we continue to celebrate ten years of the Educate! Experience, we want to highlight the dedicated staff who have allowed Educate! to reach this milestone and those who are working to prepare Educate! for its next decade of impact. Today, we are excited to spotlight Educate!’s Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, Meghan Mahoney.

Standing in the shade on the side of her grandmother’s house near Jinja, Uganda, Sarah flips through the collection of brightly colored kitenge fabric that she will soon shape into dresses, purses, and shirts. Proudly, she holds up each of her tailored pieces, grinning as she describes the intricate designs and how her ability to speak Kiswahili landed her a good deal with a fabric supplier in Tanzania. But Sarah’s path to get to where she is today — a confident young entrepreneur and provider for her family — has not been an easy one.

At Educate!, we believe that the most innovative and impactful organizations are fueled by high-growth, mission-driven teams. That’s why we’ve focused on hiring a best-in-class team, with a strong focus on East African leadership, critical to achieving meaningful impact.

Muzito Anthony is an innovator at heart. Since joining Educate! in 2011, he’s been promoted numerous times and helped to launch Educate!’s programs in both Rwanda and Kenya. Today, Muzito plays a crucial role on Educate!’s global Programs team as Training Specialist, training staff and integrating sustainability-focused innovations into our program model. We recently caught up with Muzito in Kigali to hear about his journey building Educate!’s teams across three countries.

Born in the Mountainous Rwenzori region of Uganda, Benson was first introduced to computers by his father, who began teaching him basic computing skills at an early age. At just 21 years old, former Educate! Scholar Benson is not only a young entrepreneur and avid computer programmer with his own business, but a budding philanthropist as well.

In April, two Educate! leaders joined researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from around the world at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) annual meeting, sharing their expertise on the theme of Education for Sustainability.

Daniel Okurut, a former Educate! Scholar in Western Uganda, leveraged both his medical education and his business skills gained through Educate! to open a rural health clinic in his community. Today, he splits his time between his role as a Youth Leader and his clinic, where he employs two people and conducts 350 checkups a month.

Over the past ten years, I’ve been proud to design and direct the implementation of our programs in schools in East Africa. 2019 marks an exceptional milestone for our team – a decade of operating our flagship Educate! Experience program in schools across Uganda. Taking this opportunity to reflect my own journey with Educate!, I’ve identified a few key lessons that have informed my personal approach to design.

2019 is an important milestone for the entire Educate! family, but it is especially significant for those team members who have been here from the start. To reflect on this journey, we caught up with Connie Mpirirwe, who joined the team more than ten years ago as one of Educate!’s first Mentors.

Launching their small business has provided Rwandan secondary students Fausta and Emelyne the opportunity to practice essential hard and soft skills that will better prepare them for success after graduation. These skills, the girls say, have helped them build their self-confidence, while expanding their view of what’s possible.

In 2018, through an external qualitative evaluation in partnership with IDinsight, we gained a better understanding of exactly how and why our model creates impact, and identified the ways we can continue to strengthen our in-school programs.

Educate!’s Design and Experiment (D&X) team is on the front lines of impact – thoughtfully crafting the curriculum and content that reaches thousands of African youth and prepares them with the skills they need for life after school. To scale our design approach alongside our growth, Educate!’s D&X team developed the Design Academy. This rigorous interactive online learning experience is a tool for onboarding new design staff and building capacity on our D&X team.

What barriers still exist for girls’ education in Uganda? This is the critical question that Hawah Nabbuye, Educate!’s Deputy Country Director in Uganda, is seeking to answer this year as part of the Echidna Global Scholars Program, a visiting fellowship hosted by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution.

In a new book, researchers from the Center for Universal Education at Brookings Institution set out to identify inspiring initiatives and education innovation from around the world who are  challenging persistent inequality and accelerating progress in education.

In 2019 and beyond, our curriculum will be reaching more youth than ever thanks to our partnership with World Possible. Educate!’s open-source curriculum was included on OER2Go alongside other innovative resources from UNESCO, Khan Academy, Ted Talks, Wikipedia.