Creating Educational Opportunities for Youth in Poverty

September 27, 2018

For Naima, to be a teacher is to be a changemaker in the lives of her students.  

A community advocate and educator, Naima grew frustrated with local poverty and the shortcomings of her region’s educational system. In her remote and under-resourced area, education stakeholders frequently overlooked the needs of the local population. While she provided students with supplementary lessons out of tent classrooms, Naima enrolled in EF’s social entrepreneurship courses, hoping to build lasting educational programs for her community. 

Through EF’s courses, Naima connected with a diverse community of changemakers eager to develop innovative solutions to social problems. As part of the course, participants practiced their leadership and entrepreneurial skills by designing social impact projects. Then, EF project management training helped them act on these plans.  

As her social impact project, Naima transformed her tent classroom activities into an educational center where local children benefit from contemporary teaching strategies, like critical thinking games and participative exercises. There, she leads a team of seven educators. She also started consulting with parents on the practice of underage marriage, which is common in her region, encouraging parents to keep their daughters in school instead. 

Naima believes that EF’s project management training helped her refine and implement her vision for the center. She also credits the training with showing her the benefits of group problem-solving, a strategy her team employs today. As Naima’s education project continues to grow, she and her team are instilling in their students the knowledge and critical thinking skills to become changemakers for the next generation.