Educate!

Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with schools and governments to reform what schools teach and how they teach it, so that students in Africa have the skills to start businesses, get jobs and drive development in their communities. Our goal is to make this practical, skills-based model part of national education systems across Africa. In 2019, we’re partnering with the government to pilot in 60+ schools in Kenya, working in 175+ secondary schools in Rwanda and 800+ schools in Uganda (25% of the country) reaching over 44,000 students intensively and 545,000 more broadly. Two rigorous external evaluations, including a randomized controlled trial, found that towards the end of secondary school, participants of our program earn nearly DOUBLE the income of their peers and are 44% more likely to launch a business. Girls achieve even greater results. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Lillian Aero who employs over 100 AIDS-affected women.

We've created a 100-hour experience that delivers the most essential skills youth need to transition to work, combining training, mentorship, and practical experience starting a business. We deliver this experience to youth in 3 ways: directly in schools, integrated into education systems, and through bootcamps for out-of-school youth.

All three delivery channels have been validated by several independent evaluations, which found outcomes on employment, gender equity, family planning and sexual and reproductive health, educational attainment, and climate change. To date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a non-profit social enterprise with 200 staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Mulago, Echoing Green, Ashoka and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (and was featured in a video), a 2015 WISE Award, and was highlighted by Bill Gates, in S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions.