This week we’ve been thrilled to host our Philippines team in Botswana, to benchmark ahead of their upcoming TaRL Literacy launch. The visit has focused on facilitator training, monitoring frameworks, and classroom-level data use, ensuring that scaling lessons from Botswana inform a strong, locally-relevant rollout in the Philippines. As our teams collaborate across contexts, this is what global learning in action looks like: shared evidence, shared systems, and a shared commitment to improving foundational learning outcomes worldwide. #TaRL #GlobalEducation #FoundationalLearning #LearningAtScale
Youth Impact
Education
Gaborone, South East 15,501 followers
We connect youth with proven life-changing information through our health and education programs.
About us
Youth Impact’s mission is to connect youth to proven life-changing information. Our vision is to enable over 1 million youth to thrive through delivery of multiple evidence-based programs. We are at an inflection point in our growth: we have over 300 staff, 3 programs in health and education, a cumulative reach of over 250,000 youth, and have worked in 20+ countries. Our culture is unique: we are always learning, have a dynamic, youthful team, a fierce commitment to measurement and evidence, and work hand-in-hand with the government. Choices is an effective evidence-based 90-minute intervention encouraging youth to make healthy and informed relationship choices. The program reveals the unknown risks of dating older partners and encourages youth to make healthy relationship choices. When delivered by peer educators, the program has been shown to reduce teenage pregnancy, a proxy for HIV risk, by up to 40%. We partner with the government to implement the program at national scale. Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) is an evidence-based, remedial education approach, targeting basic literacy and numeracy skills by assessing and grouping students according to learning needs instead of by age or grade. The program is proven to increase numeracy skills, with up to 89% of participants learning at least one mathematical operation. As a TaRL Innovation Hub, we radiate our lessons learnt and actively support organisations in Namibia, South Africa and The Philippines with the implementation of TaRL. ConnectEd is a targeted, phone-based tutoring program shown to significantly improve basic numeracy skills. Over a period of 8 weeks, 59% of students learn at least 1 mathematical operation. Rigorously tested in 6 countries, ConnectEd can support students who cannot access in-person school or attend school, but need additional support. Beyond Botswana, we partner with governments and NGOs to bring ConnectEd to learners in disrupted settings around the world.
- Website
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https://www.youth-impact.org/
External link for Youth Impact
- Industry
- Education
- Company size
- 201-500 employees
- Headquarters
- Gaborone, South East
- Type
- Nonprofit
- Founded
- 2014
- Specialties
- HIV/AIDS, Education, Youth Empowerment, and Evidence/Research
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
Plot 6789 Seboko Close, Extension 21
Gaborone, South East 00000, BW
Employees at Youth Impact
Updates
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📹 Watch our Head of Research and Innovation, Claire Cullen, join the VoxDev Ideas in Development Podcast to discuss how India is leveraging AI for development: https://lnkd.in/dgZmMXGr We’ve piloted an AI-powered assessment bot in India that runs quick diagnostics to determine exactly where a child is in their learning journey, enabling more targeted instruction. By reducing the time spent on manual assessments and grouping, teachers can reach 25% more students. 📌 Learn more about our work in India: https://lnkd.in/dVCX69zk #AIForGood #EdTech #TeachingAtTheRightLevel #India #AI4Development Noora Health | The Agency Fund | Rocket Learning | OpenAI
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Youth Impact reposted this
📣 Join us and Youth Impact on 11 March for a webinar introducing a practical toolkit for iterative A/B testing – featuring perspectives from funders, researchers, implementing partners and government. Designed to strengthen routine learning and improve programme cost-effectiveness, iterative A/B testing helps organisations: 🔍 test small changes 💡 learn quickly, and 📈 continuously optimise programmes already operating at scale. At the webinar, speakers from the Gates Foundation, Youth Impact, the Innovations for Poverty Action Right-Fit Evidence Unit, The Agency Fund, and South Africa’s Department of Basic Education will share reflections on why iterative testing matters, what it looks like in practice, and how it can support better decision-making across diverse institutional contexts. 📅 Date: 11 March 2026 🕑 Time: 2pm GMT ➡️ Register now: https://lnkd.in/ehCa_cFd #ImplementationScience | #Webinar | #IterativeTesting | #WhatWorksHubforGlobalEducation
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Reflections from the India AI Impact Summit 2026 ✨ Last week, we joined changemakers from across the Global South to explore how AI can drive real social impact. A key highlight? Presenting Ganitha Ganaka (ConnectEd) and our experiments with an AI-led assessment bot. Our biggest takeaways: 🔎 Strong interest in both our pilot results and the technical roadblocks we’re tackling, especially child voice recognition 🤝 Valuable conversations that unlocked new collaboration and problem-solving opportunities 🏛️ Co-designing with government from day one is critical for sustainable scale 🧠 Meaningful AI requires collaboration, experimentation, and deep contextual understanding 📽️ Learn more about Ganitha Ganaka: https://lnkd.in/dV9XWG34 #AIForGood #GlobalSouth #IndiaAIImpactSummit #AI4Development The Agency Fund | Rocket Learning | Noora Health | OpenAI
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Youth Impact reposted this
🆕 Three ways India is using AI for development This week on VoxDev's Ideas in Development podcast, I spoke with Utkarsh Saxena (Adalat AI), Claire Cullen (Youth Impact) and Niriksha Shetty (Precision Development (PxD)) about how their organisations are already deploying AI in India, and what they’ve learned during the process. One lesson that stood out across this work in India's courtrooms, classrooms and agriculture, is that the AI model itself is not necessarily the hard part. For these interventions to scale, the organisational plumbing around the model is crucial. This means dealing with the nitty gritty implementation questions of trust-building, workflows, incentives, training, and language. 🔗 I really enjoyed learning about these cool organisations, links in comments ⤵️
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Youth Impact reposted this
PxD CEO Niriksha Shetty spoke with Oliver Hanney from the VoxDev Ideas in Development podcast this week alongside Utkarsh Saxena (Adalat AI) and Claire Cullen (Youth Impact) - on what deploying AI for development actually looks like on the ground. The through-line across all three guests: the model or technology is rarely what makes or breaks an intervention. Trust-building, language, workflows, and the unglamorous work of fitting new tools into existing institutions - that's where things get hard. "Technology has only been one part of the problem. And it's often not the hardest part." - Niriksha Shetty Watch it on YouTube https://lnkd.in/d4U8iQ7t or listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dAcrHFP2
Three ways India is using AI for development
https://www.youtube.com/
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Youth Impact reposted this
Grateful to be invited as a Speaker at the @TeenSummit 2026 sharing a stage with Thobo Khathola CEO of LION TUTORING. In 2010, we met as students in high school. Oh we were curious and full of questions! We spoke about possibilities. Years later, here we are... Not just having conversations but actually doing the hard stuff in the education-youth space. There is something profoundly humbling about growing alongside people who remain committed to purpose. The journey from classmates to collaborators in national conversations is a reminder that seeds planted in our teen years do not die -- they mature. Youth Impact
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Promotion alert ✨ We’re excited to announce the promotion of Karabo Kgwelokgwelo to Sub-Regional Coordinator under the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) program. Karabo is an accomplished education professional with a strong track record of working with children. He began his career as a Tirelo Sechaba Participant at Lephaleng Primary School in Molepolole and later joined Youth Impact as a TaRL Facilitator, where his passion and natural ability to connect with learners quickly stood out. He was subsequently promoted to Mentor, further demonstrating his commitment to both the organisation and the TaRL mission. Karabo is passionate about fostering diversity and inclusion, helping build a cohesive and supportive team environment. His strong communication skills and approachable nature make him a trusted and valued colleague. Congratulations Karabo!🥳
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📈 Scaling What Works: Institutionalizing mEducation in Public Education Systems Many promising education innovations struggle to move beyond the pilot phase and become embedded within public systems. In the wake of COVID-19, we first piloted mEducation (also known as ConnectEd) an evidence-based intervention combining targeted math instruction with personalised phone-based tutoring. Since then, it has grown significantly, demonstrating both impact and scalability within public education systems. Join this webinar hosted by HundrEDorg and Innovations for Poverty Action, featuring our co-founder Noam Angrist, to explore what it takes to institutionalise what works. 👉 Ideal for funders, policymakers, education leaders, and implementers 📆 24 February 2026 🔗 Register here: https://lnkd.in/d9WqNzKF 📘 Learn more about mEducation: https://lnkd.in/dwsvid3y #Education #ScalingImpact #PublicEducation
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I have spent most of my time building systems, reviewing data, and thinking about scale. But last week, I had the opportunity to step away from the screen and see the incredible reality behind the numbers at Youth Impact I spent two days in rural schools in Yadgir, Karnataka, observing the "Ganitha Ganaka" program. It was inspiring to see firsthand how learning truly happens on the ground. What stayed with me wasn’t a metric. It was the people: ◆ Teachers going the extra mile long after school hours. ◆ Parents actively participating in their children’s learning. ◆ Relationships built around student progress. There was no noise or big announcements—just quiet, consistent effort from the community. From a tech perspective, the visit was a wonderful reminder: 𝑻𝒆𝒄𝒉𝒏𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒚 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕. 𝑷𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒅𝒐. As we build for this ecosystem, our goal is to be a supportive partner. We have the chance to design tools that reduce friction—making a teacher’s already demanding work a little easier and a little more supported. If we want to achieve scale in education, we must start with humility: ◆ Listen deeply to the ground reality. ◆ Build for the human behind the data point. I am grateful for the reminder that real impact in education is, and always will be, a deeply human journey. Special thanks to Subash Prabakaran and Abhishek Vadde from our Program team for being my guides and sharing their perspective on the ground. #Education #EdTech #DataForGood #Yadgir #Impact #youthImpact
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