After nearly 15 years, our Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer and Co-Founder, Angelica, will be stepping down from her leadership role to support the education system in her current home country of Namibia. Read her message to Educate!’s champions.

Ritah’s passion for entrepreneurship stems from her upbringing. From an early age, she was taught how to interact with customers at her family’s shop. These experiences instilled in Ritah the importance of leveraging her skill set to realize her goals. As an active participant in Educate!, Ritah continuously sought leadership opportunities - eager to grow both personally and professionally while also contributing to her community.

In 2021, our Uganda Country Director found herself in a meeting accompanied by an incredible set of sector experts, many of whom she used to work alongside at Educate!. After catching up with old friends, she realized just how many former staff credit Educate! with their professional development and the impact they’re now making after moving on from the organization. Following a joyful reunion, we caught up with a few of the all-stars who shaped Educate! into what it is today and asked them about their time at Educate! and how it might have shaped their career paths. Check out where they are now!

Throughout her life experiences, Sarah has developed an incredible zeal for the importance of self-reliance. When we last talked to Sarah, she was running a series of small businesses in Jinja, Uganda. For Sarah, these endeavors paved the way for independence when her father’s sudden passing left her family unable to support Sarah and her siblings. Coupled with entrepreneurial knowledge and skills, Sarah’s determination not only led her to finish secondary school and secure financial freedom but also inspired her to help those in a similar position. She ultimately dreamed of starting an orphanage. Today, Sarah is one step closer to this goal.

Dieudonne’s life took a drastic turn when, at only 17 years old, he was forced to flee from his home country of Burundi due to political instability. Separated from his family, he was placed at the Mahama Refugee camp in Kirehe, Rwanda. When the pandemic hit, Dieudonne worked to gain financial independence by starting his own food production business. Initially, he struggled with his venture due to his inexperience. Then, he joined Educate!, which he says paved the way for his growth and success.

To succeed in a fast-paced world, young people need focus, innovative skills, and creativity. Over the last seven years, Educate! has worked closely with the Rwandan government to embed these critical skills into the national education system. We recently had the pleasure of connecting with State Minister of Education of Rwanda Honorable Mr. Gaspard Twagirayezu and reflect on our partnership thus far.

Illicit. Underground. Noncompliant. These are some of the stigmas surrounding the words “informal economy,” but in a world where 61% of workers earn their living through informal employment, these words, along with many misconceptions, don’t paint an accurate picture.

Educate! not only celebrates the important contributions of informal workers but believes that investing in youth who will likely enter this market is a key step in empowering them to become leaders with the skills to drive positive change.

When her father passed away and her family could no longer afford her school fees, Olivia had to drop out of secondary school in Western Uganda. At 25 years old, Olivia viewed herself as a girl from a modest background, dependent on her mother to support her basic needs. Then, Olivia joined SisterConnect, an Educate! bootcamp aimed to provide an alternative pathway to employment for youth who are unable to access post-primary education. Over the next few weeks, Olivia would build more than just a business.

Taking a gender-transformative approach — addressing inequities at the individual, institutional, community, and governmental levels — is the most powerful step we can take towards creating more vibrant, healthier, and more peaceful communities around the world. Three gender-transformative education principles drive our impact on girls and gender equity-related outcomes for all youth.

Schools in Uganda opened their doors in January to welcome back students after a staggering 83-week closure — the longest closure of schools anywhere in the world — caused by the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020. But while many young people will eagerly pack their book bags and return to the classroom, officials in Uganda estimate that up to a third of students may never return. This is a disheartening projection for the large number of young people who are already struggling to secure quality employment and build their livelihoods.

Just six months after COVID-19 closed schools, Educate! launched its first distance learning model in Uganda, and 3,400 young people enrolled. We’re now remotely reaching just as many Ugandan youth as we were in schools pre-pandemic, with over 40,000 enrolled. This rapid adaptation and scale are made possible by our ongoing investment in collaborative research and development (R&D), driven by our Design and Monitoring & Evaluation Teams.

Having established that the Educate! approach to skills-based education significantly impacts youth when we deliver it to students ourselves, we devoted our energy towards exploring how we might make this experience available to more young people. We began to consider the potential of embedding this approach into national curricula. With the evidence of our original in-school model in hand, might governments have any interest in using it to improve the education their youth receive? And if so, could that new curriculum improve graduates’ lives?

Despite learning from experience that women are capable of anything, when Joan entered secondary school, she started to feel like she didn't belong. Thanks to Joan’s perseverance, the network of support she created for herself, and the skills she’s honed through Educate!, today, Joan is a small business owner, a lab technician student, and an incredible mentor.

Educate! is impact-obsessed. For over ten years, we’ve invested heavily in measuring our solutions through rigorous impact evaluations, including external randomized controlled trials. While these longterm studies are critical to measuring our impact on youth life outcomes over time, we’ve also learned that collecting smaller datasets, faster, can ensure we’re able to improve upon our models in real time.

Secondary school offers the most natural and cost-effective way for youth to learn and practice the transferable, socioemotional, and entrepreneurial skills that they will need to thrive in the future, whether they seek employment or create their own businesses. Read how Educate! works with governments to improve youth skills to ensure them better life outcomes.

Head of External Relations Rachael Miller Buck sits down with Acting Head of Tech and Head of Performance Metrics Samson Mbugua to chat about his role, what this past year has taught him, and what he's looking forward to.

Three Educate! leaders joined researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from around the world at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) annual meeting, sharing their expertise on the theme of Social Responsibility Within Changing Contexts.