Uganda’s youth unemployment rate is the highest in Africa. According to a recent study entitled Lost Opportunity? Gaps in Youth Policy and Programming in Uganda, compiled by ActionAid, Uganda’s youth unemployment is now 62 percent. According to The Guardian, The African Development Bank estimates it could be as high as 83 percent.
Educate! hopes to help change these disheartening stats. Educate! works to help Ugandan youth become community leaders and entrepreneurs.Founded by U.S. citizens Boris Bulayev, Eric Glustrom, and Angelica Towne, the non-profit organization is continuing to grow.
Bulayev, co-founder and executive director, is a 2007 alumni of Amherst College. He began working with Glustrom on Educate! in the beginning of his sophomore year of college in October 2004. During the summer of 2007, he launched the development of Educate!’s new leadership program. Glustrom, founder of Educate! and Watson University (the U.S.), has been recognized as an Ashoka fellow, Echoing Green fellow, and one of Forbes’ 30 social entrepreneurs under 30. Towne is Educate! co-founder and country director. A graduate from Middlebury College, she worked in education and Jamaica and the U.S. prior to coming to Uganda.
Angelica Towne tells AFKInsider how Educate! is working to change the lives of youth in Uganda.
AFKInsider: How did you come up with the idea for Educate!
Angelica Towne: Educate! was created by two U.S. college students, Boris Bulayev and Eric Glustrom, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of youth in Uganda. What began as a scholarship program for just a few Congolese youth refugees living in Uganda has developed into a widespread success operating in 54 schools in various areas of Uganda.
After completing university Bulayev and Glustrom spent time on the ground in Uganda. It became clear to both of them that even if every child in Uganda was given a scholarship, the mismatch between education and life after school would not be solved. Jobs did not exist and the only option for students was to start their own businesses. Schools just taught them to memorize facts and there simply were not ways for youth in Uganda to get the skills, experience and confidence they needed to start their own businesses and improve their livelihoods.
With this in mind, Bulayev and Glustrom started asking the youth they knew in Uganda what they needed most; they surveyed students about what was most vital to them. The answers all pointed to one thing: opportunity. What they needed were relevant skills they could learn and put to use in Uganda, a country with few job prospects and little means for formal employment. This sent Bulayev and Glustrom to the drawing board and also helped them find the third piece to their founders puzzle — me.
I brought experience creating curricula in Jamaica and the U.S., and joined Educate! as a natural outgrowth of my passion for helping youth become changemakers in their communities.
AFKInsider: How does the program work?
Angelica Towne: Educate! delivers to 16-20 year-old youth within Ugandan schools a practical and relevant model of education comprised of a leadership and entrepreneurship course, interactive teaching, intensive mentorship, experience starting an enterprise, and access to out-of-school networks and resources. Through advocacy and direct service in schools, we are working to get this model to be part of the education system.
AFKInsider: How do you fund the program?
Angelica Towne: A combination of individual donors and grants.
AFKInsider: How has the government assisted the program?
Angelica Towne: In 2012, the Ugandan National Curriculum Development Centre asked us to incorporate our curriculum and student business club structure into the national curriculum. We now reach 25,000 students through this government partnership.
AFKInsider: Why do you feel there is a need for such a program?
Angelica Towne: Globally, 311 million young people are unemployed, largely due to the mismatch between education and life after school. This problem is most acute in Uganda where 50 percent of the population is under the age of 15. Uganda’s population is the youngest in world, and it has the highest youth poverty rate with 94 percent of youth living on less than $2 a day. Yet the memorization-based education system does not adequately prepare youth for the challenges they will face after school.
That’s where we come in. Educate! works to transform the education system in Africa, starting with Uganda, to prepare youth to be leaders and entrepreneurs who can create small businesses, improve their livelihoods and drive long-term sustainable development.
AFKInsider: What have been some of the challenges you have faced with Educate!?
Angelica Towne: Working with new schools and finding the right donors. We also strive to get the best results for our youth and to have the best monitoring and evaluation in our field. This can be a challenge but we are continually improving and expanding our M&E capabilities to ensure that we are using data to improve our model and to fully understand our impact. Our innovative work in M&E includes the creation of evaluation tools unlike any that previously existed in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the Secondary School Assessment Tool (SSAT), and a partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action for a randomized control trial (RCT).
AFKInsider: What are your long-term goals?
Angelica Towne: In the next few years we hope to deliver our experience to 100 new students at one school in Uganda, getting us closer to our milestone of delivering our model across 200 schools to 20,000 students throughout Uganda. Our vision and hope is a world where African education systems prepare youth to be leaders and entrepreneurs who drive long-term sustainable development.
AFKInsider: What do you enjoy the most about Educate!?
Angelica Towne: Seeing the students fulfill their potential. I get to see the pictures of students holding their livestock and produce up proudly. I hear them tell stories first-hand of solving problems at their schools and in their communities by creating innovative lights or inventing new radio transmitters for emergencies. Nothing brings me more joy and motivation than to share in their accomplishments. I believe the youth have so much to teach us about how to create a better future.