Proud to announce our first mission partner: Educate! (the ! is part of their name)
Familiar with the "teach a man to fish" approach? That sums up Educate!
What do they do?
Educate! is transforming secondary education in Africa to create a grassroots movement of leaders and entrepreneurs necessary to drive development.
Educate! provides leadership and entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and experience starting a business to secondary school youth in Uganda. We aim to develop youth to take leadership initiative, create small businesses, and improve their livelihoods. Educate!’s ultimate goal is to replicate our experience-based education model across Africa so that young people can solve poverty for themselves and their communities.
Educate! has been recognized by: Forbes, The Brookings Institute, and a 2015 WISE Awards Finalist just to name a few.
We'd like to share with you the inspiring story of an ambitious young man named Denis so you can see what rock stars the Educate! Scholars are:
Denis is a Mentor in Lira, Educate!'s first district in the neediest region of Uganda where we plan to launch our program in 80 new partner schools next year. As an Educate! Scholar, Denis started a poultry business with a few chickens. As he bred more chickens, he sold them and invested the money into a new business - a piggery, which he similarly grew and used to generate capital for a third business, breaking down and selling concrete that is used to build houses and roads.
Today, Denis owns 15 pigs, 100 chickens, and a thriving concrete business that employs 20 young people in his community. Last year, Denis joined the Youth Business Experience program, which has enabled him to mentor other Educate! Scholars while further developing his business skills. Denis says that YBE has been particularly beneficial to him because of the focus on business and financial management. Before YBE, he had minimal knowledge of accounting and his budgeting and recordkeeping were not very strong.
As a YBE Fellow, Denis has learned to create a detailed budget before making a new investment, to plan for where each shilling will come from, and to keep careful records. He has been able to use these skills to start another new business - a mobile money outlet, which has quickly grown to three outlets - and a community project, giving microloans to other young entrepreneurs in his community.
