Established 2009
Youth Impact
Established 2014
BACKGROUND
Established in 2014, Youth Impact is an evidence-based, youth-led organization based in Botswana that identifies, adapts, and scales up health and education programs for young people around the world, hand in hand with governments. Youth Impact, in collaboration with the Ministry of Basic Education and the University of Botswana, conducted a needs assessment study of 2,500 Standard 5 students in two regions across 47 schools, which they adapted from ASER and Uwezo. The study found that 54% of students were below grade level in literacy and 85% of students below grade level in numeracy.
THE PROGRAMS
In 2018, Youth Impact signed an MoU with the Government of Botswana to implement Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) nationally. TaRL is a 30-hour remedial program that is integrated into the normal school day. TaRL has a strong evidence base, backed by a series of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) run over 15 years by Pratham and J-PAL. In 2020, Youth Impact developed a complementary remote tutoring program based on the same principles, called ConnectEd.
THE RESULTS
TaRL in Botswana is proven to improve numeracy skills, with up to 89% of participants learning at least one mathematical operation. ConnectEd has also been proven to work, through a multi-country RCT which found that the program can deliver up to 4 years of quality education per $100.
OPTIMIZING AND SCALING
As a learning organization, Youth Impact is committed to connecting evidence to action. It has partnered with J-PAL and Pratham to build an Innovation Hub in Botswana for Teaching at the Right Level, and has partnered with The Brookings Institution to be a Real-Time Scaling Lab as part of the Millions Learning project. Youth Impact is supporting partners in multiple countries, such as Namibia, South Africa, India, and the Philippines, in adopting and implementing TaRL and ConnectEd at scale. Moreover, its pioneering A/B testing methods help to optimize programs in a rapid, rigorous and repeatable way, and Youth Impact supports partners in developing their own testing capacity.