Angelica Towne Amporo started Educate! with her Co-founders based on the shared values of scale, sustainability, and the power of young people to change the world. Angelica built Educate! from scratch, combining her experience piloting youth programs in Jamaica and Ethiopia with her creativity and passion for spearheading the creation, development, and continued evolution of Educate!’s model. For the last six years, she has lived and worked in Uganda overseeing the implementation of Educate!’s programs in 250 schools. She also adapted Educate!’s course curriculum for use in the Uganda national curriculum and designed a new practical standardized examination, reaching 25,000 young people annually. Angelica’s goal is to transform traditional classrooms into training grounds for youth to learn the skills to end poverty in their own lives and their communities.
Globally, 311 million young people are unemployed, largely due to the mismatch between education and life after school. This problem is most acute in Africa – with a lack of formal jobs, 90% of African youth are going to work in the informal sector. But the education systems across Africa deliver a false promise – that spending years in school does not necessarily lead to employment or opportunity. Educate! transforms secondary education in Africa to teach young people to solve poverty for themselves and their communities. Educate! has developed a curriculum that encourages youth to take leadership roles, create small businesses, and ultimately, improve their livelihoods.
In her words: “I know firsthand what it means to be literally saved by nonprofit organizations that embody creative solutions to society’s opportunity gaps. At Kyangwali Refugee Camp, I swapped stories with other youth who received “sponsorship” or scholarships to attend university and how it changed our lives forever. I felt such a beautiful solidarity with our students and reaffirmation of the necessity of this work.”
Angelica was twice named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list of social entrepreneurs. She was honoured with the Mulago Foundation’s prestigious Rainer Arnhold Fellowship and the Global Good Fellowship in 2015. She holds a BA from Middlebury College.
In 2023 Aneglica joined the organization Youth Impact to launch Teaching at the Right Level in her current home country of Namibia. This is a cause close to her heart and working in the education system in Namibia is something that she felt called to pursue in her life.