Sustaining Measurable Impact for Youth Through Systems Change

• In Event: Sustainability: Conceptual Frameworks, evaluating progress and exemplars of it all in action

Proposal

Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. Recognizing that the formal education system often leaves youth without the skills most important for life after school, Educate! created a model that helps youth build the most essential skills needed to transition to work. This experience combines training, mentorship, and practical experience starting a business. Educate! delivers this experience to youth in three 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 (Blimpo and Pugatch 2021, Carney et al 2019; Chioda et al 2021). To date, this model has impacted more than 200,000 youth. A randomized evaluation of our in-school model found that, 3.5 years after graduation, youth who participated in the Educate! program saw strong and lasting improvements in areas linked to better life outcomes, including transferable skills, educational attainment, gender equity, and family planning.
In response to these results, Educate! began working to partner with governments to scale this impact through education systems. In thinking about sustainability, Educate! aims to achieve the impact created by the direct delivery program by retooling education systems to deliver this core experience. Educate! does this system integration work in three stages: (1) policy reform, (2) in-service government teacher training, and (3) the integration of sustainability structures. Using the GEC Sustainability Framework, the aim of the first two stages falls under adoption. However, the work of the third stage aims to push the impact into replication and scale. Educate! piloted this government partnership approach in Rwanda in 2015. Within the first stage, Educate! provided technical advisory support to the Rwandan Education Board (REB) as it updated its national Entrepreneurship curriculum. Within the second stage, Educate! designed a two-year teacher training and support model. A randomized evaluation (Blimpo and Pugatch, 2020) found that the program increased teachers’ use of active instruction techniques. When researchers followed up with the youth included in the study 6 months after they completed secondary school, youth in the intervention group had maintained higher levels of business ownership, showed some improvements in a few soft skills, and were also more likely to be enrolled in university. Within stage three, Educate! is working with the government to strengthen the sustainability structures and incentives, such as assessment reform, which are necessary to sustain and deepen these impacts.
By working through the national education system, Educate! has scaled its core experience to reach greater numbers of youth. While other skills-based programs may face challenges in maintaining impact over the long term without continuous funding and programming, Educate!’s education system support work aims to make sustained improvements to education quality by strengthening policies and embedding systems that support long-term adoption. In this presentation, Educate! will share its approach to institutionalizing skills-based education, the results achieved and lessons learned to date, as well as discuss how this work fits within the five goals of the GEC Sustainability Framework.

Author

• Boris Bulayev, Educate!