Youth Impact is a grassroots organization dedicated to bringing rigorous evidence off the academic shelf and using it to adapt and scale up health and education programs by youth for youth. They are one of the largest youth-serving organizations in Botswana. Their programs have reached nearly 100,000 students in more than 600 schools across the country and shown impressive gains in HIV knowledge and numeracy. As such, they are a trusted partner of the Botswana government and we have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Basic Education to collaborate on the scale-up of "Teaching at the Right Level" (TaRL), a proven approach to improving literacy and numeracy. In addition, Youth Impact's Advisory Forum is chaired by the former Permanent Secretary of Basic Education and our co-founder chairs the Botswana National Youth Council.
Youth Impact has a regional implementation and knowledge footprint beyond Botswana. Their sexual and reproductive health program is being introduced in eSwatini and Malawi. Youth Impact also supports the implementation of TaRL in Namibia and Kenya. Young 1ove is leading efforts to build an Innovation Hub in Botswana for TaRL to co-host trainings, share lessons learned, and test new innovations to maximize cost-effective impact at scale. It has partnered with the Government of Botswana and the Brookings Institution to be a Real-Time Scaling Lab as part of the Millions Learning project. Young 1ove is regularly invited to participate in fora to share their work, including workshops with the World Bank, the What Works Summit, and the Africa Evidence Network.
