 Good morning, my lovely viewers, and welcome to Real Talk. I am your host, Eve Nyaga. So you can be good at something, but you may not have the person to take a chance on you, or believe in you. Today, we will be talking about the chance Akili Dada in partnership with Yale Young African Scholars is taking for young women. You can be part of this conversation by sharing your comments, sending in, just telling us where you're watching us from, or just say good morning to us. You can send in those comments on Isha Acute, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or you can reach me directly on my social media platforms at eveandaskwenyaga1 on Instagram and Twitter and Evelyn Nyaga on Facebook. So our guests today, we have Kir from Akili Dada and Lucy from Young Yale African Scholars to share with us more about their respective organizations and how the partnership is impacting lives of young women. Then later, we will be joined by one beneficiary from the Yale Young African Scholars and a tutor, an instructor, sorry. So welcome, ladies. Thank you. I'm honored to have you with us today. Thank you. So kindly introduce yourself. My name is Lucy Apia from Ghana. I'm the Associate Director for the Yale Young African Scholars Program based in the U.S. Okay, thank you, welcome. Thank you. Good morning, thank you for having us. My name is Kate Kema. I manage programs at Akili Dada. Akili Dada is a leadership incubator for girls and young women and we have been programming for girls age 13 to 35 for the last 14 years. Okay, that's nice. So why did you decide to partner with Yale Young African Scholars? All right. So Akili Dada is very intentional about creating opportunities for girls and young women, especially from underserved communities to access leadership roles, to access skills development. And so we're very excited and delighted to partner with Yale Young African Scholars Program to especially give academically brilliant girls and boys an opportunity to be able to access leadership, mentorship and help them transition especially effectively to universities and colleges abroad. So in partnership with the Yale Young African Scholars Program, we're really delighted to make sure we have high impact, a high academic low impact, low income students be able to access quality education beyond their secondary school which is why we're really excited and eager to partner with them because they have this pool of mentors and scholars and educators who can be able to give these students these opportunities. So this year we'll have 100 students coming from 33 different African countries for current convening that's happening at the Empesa Foundation just to be able to buttress this partnership and to make sure we are effectively giving opportunities to students across the continent. So you've talked about Akile Dada is only just focuses on young women, right? Yes. But Yale on the other hand is for both young boys and young women. Yes. Young boys and girls. Okay, just tell us a bit about that. So the Yale Young African Scholars Program is a summer enrichment and academic program for secondary school students in Africa as for both boys and girls. The objective of the program is to give students access to college and so every year we select 300 students and host them in three different countries to expose them to college application process financial aid application process. Every year they get to interact with Yale professors and Yale undergrad and graduate students to learn about the whole process of going through the whole process of applying to college. We also have an SAT consultant with us who takes them through the SAT preparation just to get them ready for college. Okay, so why did you choose Akile Dada specifically? I think as Kate rightly mentioned Akile Dada is known for the impacts they are making in youth education. I know that they focus mainly on girls but we thought that because of the work they are doing in Kenya and because they are recognized they will be a good partner for what we want to achieve. So in every host country we have a local partner and we thought that for Kenya Akile Dada was the best partner to do the job. So in about how many countries do you have this program? So the program is for students from all over Africa but we have local partners in three countries at the moment one in Ghana, one in Kenya and then one in Zimbabwe but we have our students coming from all over Africa. This year we received applications from 54 countries and we have students from 41 countries in the program at the moment. But here in Kenya we have 33 countries represented. Okay. So Kate could you kindly tell us the process through which someone can be part of this program and also Akile Dada? So every year the Yale will actually we don't handle the recruitment processes so once the application goes live we try as much as possible to disseminate the information through different media, schools etc. The application is very student driven so a student has to actually apply sometimes he will have recommendation that is written by either their teacher or their tutor or a mentor so the application process is very rigorous we've had the privilege of five of our students who have actually gone through both the Yale Young African Program and the Yale Global Scholars Program which Lucy will allude to in a few minutes. So the application process students have to apply for themselves so a teacher or a parent can be able to do that but as Akile Dada we are very intentional to share these opportunities once they become open so that we can have as many students be able to apply. We try as much as possible to also make posters for schools that may not have access to internet just to make sure that we are having a good mix of both rural and urban students applying for this program. The program is fully funded so we try as much as possible to encourage students at a very early age to also get travel permits especially if you're maybe in Kenya and you're going to either the Zimbabwe or the Ghanaian convening it's important that you have travel documentation so that's one of the challenges that students might face maybe you're already selected but because of lack of travel documents you don't be able to access but we're really excited that we now have the convening happening in Kenya which means that more students can actually be able to access it in country. So let's talk about Akile Dada for just a minute. How can young women be part of Akile Dada? Absolutely. So Akile Dada as I mentioned we have four programs which specifically work with girls young age 13 to 17 those are girls in high school so we give scholarships primarily to academically brilliant girls who come from underserved communities. We work with partner schools are predominantly national schools however over the next few years we are very intentional to give scholarships into Rukana and Kilifi just also to be able to recognize that those are areas perhaps where the more challenging or the hard to reach girls are so we're going to be scaling our programs and specifically focusing in those two counties. Again our applications we are feminist organization so it's really important that the student actually applies for the scholarship we have a very rigorous process to just make sure we're also giving access to the scholarship to the right girl. We do work with parents and teachers as well so if maybe you're a teacher and you're watching or you're a parent we also have programs for parents because we think it's really important that both parents and teachers are speaking the same language of empowerment and you know just self validation for their daughters especially so we do have those programs and we also run something called the Waschanawafrika Summit which is an East African girl summit which has just recently concluded yesterday. Again this application is... One program to the next. Yes this program is open to young girls in East Africa who are excited and interested to pursue causes in science, technology, engineering and maths. We bring 60 girls in Kenya and we have a rigorous leadership academy where we expose them to tech. We partnered with IHAB a few days ago and the girls were taught robotics and how to build smart cities. And then we also try and couple all of our learnings by a site visit because we want to also change the methodology of how we teach girls by making sure we also expose them to learning visits and just come to experience what it is to save the adrenaline so to be an engineer in different spaces. Young women especially in universities and maybe in colleges can also apply to a candidate to be a mentor. For us we are very intentional to have the process of women mentoring and for us mentorship doesn't have to be age there is no age constraint in how you can be able to mentor. For mentorship to effectively work you have to mentor and be mentored. So we have an application process that opens every November for mentorship for each of our programs as well. So young women can also apply. For university students especially we have something called college prep. Again this is an application process just before they graduate school. We have platforms where we can have conversations with them about how do you present yourself on interview how do you write your resume and then we do more interviews as well. Just to make sure that as much as you have the right skill set that you're also able to present yourself and explain to an employer why you're probably the best person to employ. We also do run a fellowship program so we incubate young women social entrepreneurs. Again that application went live I think three weeks ago so we'll specifically be working with young women in three counties in Tarakaneti in Kisumu and in Kilifi. So if you're women age 25 to 30 who are running a social enterprise that's not been existent for more than two years you'll be able to reach out to us at www.akilidada.org or write to us at info at akilidada and you can share the application process with you. This are so many opportunities that you're giving young women. That's interesting and very good. Thank you. So back to you. About how many months does the program take? So the program runs for about eight days but before every year sometime in October we launch the application students apply. You have to have strong academic abilities demonstration of leadership. You also have to retarget high achieving low income students or what we call Hali. So you have to be in this category to apply for our program and then July or August we run the program in three host countries but each session is just about eight days and we know that eight days is not enough to prepare someone for college so at the end of the program we prepare our students with mentors. It's a year long mentorship to help them go through the whole college application process that is why we have akilidada for our Kenyan participants and we have for non host participants we have an online mentorship program for them where they are paired with Yale undergrad and graduate students who mentor them for a whole year throughout their college application process. I must also add that our program is not possible without our donor the Higher Life Foundation which is based in Zimbabwe. Yes, this was founded by Shriven Titimasi Iwa a Zimbabwe philanthropist and this sponsor the program. Yeah, I'd like to acknowledge that. And what happens after these eight days? Yes, what happens after? I go through these eight days. How will that have impact for me? And I'm glad we have one of our students here to share her experience with you to tell you what the experience has been like for it's only been three days and she has so much to share but at the end of the eight days as I mentioned earlier our students are paired with mentors. So right at the end you have someone who help you come up with a plan when to write your SAT when to start working on your essays right up until the point where you submit your college application. So at the end of the eight days they go through a whole year mentorship program. Okay. At what point will they get the opportunity maybe to go to Yale? Because I'm thinking if we are talking about Yale there is a relationship to Yale University, right? Okay. So thank you for that question. So one of the things we do during years is to bring together other universities. So the program is not necessarily about Yale. This year we have University Rebs coming from Johns Hopkins University of Rochester Hachesi University NYU Abu Dhabi African Leadership University University of Columbia so we have University Rebs from all over the world because we want the students to be exposed to the whole application process not just for Yale but for all these other institutions. So the target is not for the idea is not to get students to Yale but to help them apply to college wherever they want to go. Whichever college they want to go to. So from Kenya how many Kenyan participants do we have? So this year we have 33 out of the 100 students currently being convened at the Empesa Foundation we have 33 Kenyans. 33 Kenyans? Yes 33 Kenyans and that is very intentional to walk this journey with them throughout the program and as they transition to colleges and universities to also buttress it's really important to support them during the application process most of them will be choosing to study abroad and so having conversations with them about culture or just awareness of if say for instance you're going to the UK how to use an oyster card when you're going through the subway it's really important to walk that journey with them and also just make sure that they have an ecosystem that's supporting them so that they can also thrive wherever they decide to go and pass through their father education. And do you follow up on these students after they've gone through the applications and they've traveled to other countries? Absolutely so this been our pilot for Akili Dada and we're very eager to follow them up but as I mentioned we've had the privilege of having five of our own students access both the Yale young African scholars program and the global one which happens at the Yale campus so we do track them and we do try and find out insights from them what did they like or what did they not like about the experience because sometimes it's really also important to make sure a young person has their own choice and their own experience to see actually don't want to go to Neheven because it snows and it's cold or I want to go to a Shasti because it's in Ghana and it's hot and I like Fufu so it's really important to also make sure young people have their voice heard and that they're making this informed decision because some of them will be gone for four years some of our partners will help facilitate them come home every year maybe for the summer holidays but sometimes if fans are not allowing they will be gone for four years and it's really important to make sure that we have a support system wherever they decide to come That's true Do you have any success stories that you could share with us? Yes we do Just like Akili Dada we also track our students' progress we have had some of our students move on to Harvard University University of Rochester Stanford University UC Berkeley Yale University so those are some of our success stories and they are doing great we had a number of our students graduate from Yale invested this year as well and currently we have a number of them at Yale University and one of our instructors who is here with us today was a YAS participant and she's now at Yale University That's interesting we'll have her later so that she can tell us how the experience was for her Do you have any particular challenges that you face? Maybe we can start with you Yes because the target is high school students from all over Africa one of the challenges is language sometimes we receive applications in French English is the language we use throughout the program and sometimes you have students who come they submit applications in English but they come and they struggle to express themselves in English and obviously this is a challenge because you want them to benefit but if they do not understand the English language then you have a challenge so in cases like that we have some of our instructors from Francophone countries who were able to and even other students were able to translate for them but obviously language is one challenge What about you Kate any particular challenges? Working with adolescent girls and now boys is an interesting challenge especially if you're not of that age group so just also recognizing how they perceive the world is very different and sometimes a lot of conflict or misunderstanding or miscommunication from both the instructors and the student happen so it's really important to also try we always say at a kildata try and remember what advice would you give your 16-year-old self to allow us to come down to their level because sometimes maybe they will refuse to go to say for instance Yale and me as an adult I'm wondering why would you make that choice but maybe it's because the student has recognized that this is actually not what they want to pursue but how they communicate that sometimes really causes a bit of challenge but also it's sometimes parents and teachers they don't want their children to go Yes they don't and I think it's something we've had we've suffered at a kildata where maybe a student has gotten a full scholarship to go elsewhere maybe her parents or her gatekeepers or her teachers are scaring her and telling her you know this is a country where there's a lot of gun issues and sometimes you create fear which is unnecessary Yes it's fully funded so sometimes that anxiety parents have and that's why we're very intentional to make sure we program which is understandable yes so it's intentional to program with teachers and parents just to also make sure we're all in the same speech and so even if parents have anxieties how can we help them manage them so that they can support their students or their child to be able to access that so that's been a challenge but we have found ways of trying to address it they're making sure we're having conversations with a girl or her gatekeepers to make sure that when the opportunity does come all of us are in the same page and then it's also just making sure that parents are proactively taking out travel documents for their children because sometimes that has happened in the past where a student has a full scholarship but then the process of taking it takes a long time or the parent maybe doesn't have a bad certificate and etc which causes a lot of delays in the system so what happens when a student turns down a scholarship have you had that we have had that it's a very painful experience to go through because it's potentially disastrous for the partnership with the university because in the future they might see Akili Dada in the students application and be a bit skeptical so we try as much as possible to be very open with our partners and just explain case by case why a student will not accept this scholarship but then also what's happened in the past is a student maybe has turned down a scholarship because again society has forced her to take a certain cause and then when she's going to say for instance do engineering in her third year she realized she wants to do music and so again we are a feminist organization it's important that these young women self actualize and if music is what you sets your soul on fire we will not force you to do engineering but then also how do we make sure you're able to actually know what you want to study before you go is something that we have to do so what we do for that is in high school and just we have a gap year program so when students finish high school before they join university we have a lot of conversations with them about talent exploration and making sure that they know what they're going to study say for instance if someone wants to go and study law we make sure we partner you with either a law firm or you go and do internship or job sharing in the judiciary so that you can have the whole experience of what exactly it looks like say for instance if you decide in the past it's happened in very organic ways there's some students who've gone to hospital they want to be doctors and they can't stand the smell of hospitals they're like I think this is hospital smell all over the world so it's important that students have that experience and just allowing our partners to allow students who don't have any credentials to come and job shadow so that they can actually make an informed decision about the causes they're going to do do you follow up on the employment that they get maybe after graduation so that is something we do with trucker students but yes it's only 6 years now and because the target is high school students we haven't had students move on to employment yet because usually students have to have at least one year of high school left before they get on to our program and then they have 4 years of college and so we haven't really had our students move on to the corporate world but if you had you would actually follow up on employment just as we are tracking their college progress we will track them why is that and for these programs you can study anything you want you don't have to be forced to study maybe considering that you are just taking those academically students who are very good academically and definitely people have that assumption that when a student is academically good they'll take those big courses engineering doctors, nurses absolutely for us we want you to decide what you want to pursue so we don't have prescribed definition of what success looks like to us but as Akeli Dada we're really intentional to make sure that our students especially for this program access universities and colleges so whatever they go to study for us we measure that as success so we will not force a student if she's gotten an A to take medicine or law or engineering it's what that self actualization and saying I'm actually really good at painting I'm actually really good at literature and I'm going to pursue this and be really brilliant at what I decide to study okay that's good so I just want us maybe to have just a few comments the last few comments from each of you as we welcome the student and the instructor so that you can finish up yeah just maybe a few comments from your side or anything you'd want to add on to what we've talked about so I'd like to thank our sponsors the Hair Life Foundation for sponsoring this program they've been our partners for the last three years and we really appreciate them and then I also want to encourage more students out there to apply this year in October we launched the application it's a very competitive process this year we received application from over 5,000 students and we selected only 300 so it is a very competitive program acceptance rate is currently 5% and so I would encourage more students to apply and put their best foot forward in the application okay thank you so at Akilidada we're really delighted for this partnership with Yas and we're really eager to see where this takes us but just also to comment to the students who may be watching this for us we are very alive to the fact that talent is universally distributed across the world but opportunity is not and so let's make sure we try as much as possible to have the most far to reach student access these opportunities yes so if we can have just walking so we'll be talking about the conference towards the end okay yes just stand over there maybe one of you can come stand over here thank you yes if we can have a mic so where will the conference be taking place so the conference is currently taking place at the Empesa Foundation which is in Thika that's where we are able to host the 100 students plus the 60 educators so that's where it's currently it's started on the 7th of August and it will be run until the 14th okay so thank you we have the instructor and the students on set with us so I'll just start with you kindly introduce yourself and tell us which patch you play with the YAS sure my name is Phyllis I'm from Zimbabwe I was a YAS participant in 2015 back when the program was much smaller and had 50 students I then went on to do the Yale young global scholars program on YAS campus I am now currently a student at Yale studying engineering and I came back to the YAS family as a YY a Yale and African scholar instructor and I'm also a Yale young global scholar instructor so I've sort of gone around the full circle so how has the experience been for you going around the full circle from the student instructor into studying now at Yale my journey did begin at the Yale and African scholars program and the first stage is all about exposure to things I would have previously not known I've always known that I loved applied science but I've also always known that I wanted to be more than just an engineer because growing up as a Southern African child you either a doctor an engineer an accountant or a failure so and I've always known that there were the interests that I had and I couldn't probably express out loud to my family so getting to the Yale young African scholars program taught me about something known as a liberal arts college which is where you can major in your degree but you can also take classes in psychology in philosophy in other interests you may have had not known that you had and so that was when I decided that my next would probably be considering a university in America I then attended the Yale young global scholars program where I actually got to be on Yale's campus and experience being a college student in the U.S. for the first time and that's when all my options all roads just pointed to applying to the U.S. and I made it to Yale University and I thought back to what it was like for me back before I even knew about the young African scholars program and how many other students were in the same situation where they do not know the kind of opportunities that are out there and so I really thought it was important for me to come as an instructor sort of come back and give back and just serve other students who were like me before just so they can be exposed just so they can have a different narrative as well there yes so I will get back to you first of all I'd like her to introduce herself if you could just pass the mic to her sorry hi my name is Fuzia Elhad and I'm 17 I'm from Sudan and so the yeah the first time I've heard of this whole program and the CL program was through my counselor and the reason why he pointed this out was because usually our region in this area and a lot of things that I don't know is that we don't usually have programs like this and we don't know much of some more programs but then typical high school students in the United States and in different areas of the world are exposed to such opportunities and programs where they come together and yeah basically so how has the experience been for you the experience so far has been amazing and has been brilliant it's something that I've never tried before because one of the main things that I've seen in this program is how we came from different areas in Africa and all of us came together to this new exposure where we're learning about our different cultures and different people different stories and through that exposure you get to know more about the continent itself and about all these different things and another aspect about this whole program and something that I really find great helpful is the fact that the program itself introduces you to the application system in other universities and mostly the United States so once you enter this program you get guidance from those who have been there before and have also been accepted and have gone to these universities so if you have any questions and any advice for such concerns or anything that you don't know of so you're exposed to people who know a lot and the third thing which I really like about this program is the fact that one of the focuses is leadership and as seen in Africa and all around different nations we have a bit of a small weakness in leadership since we haven't been exposed to a lot of training and all these different things so one of the main focuses is to build leadership within every character and confidence so then after we leave the program we become the leaders that Africa wants to see for the next generations and for the upcoming future so what is your goal at the end of it all in the end of all long term yes long term okay so my goal is I come from Sudan right so my goal is to go study university in the United States most likely and after I do so I would also like to come back to my country and because I feel like there's a lot of work to be done there although and then we need those who have all these opportunities and are educated in ways where some other people are put in current situations where the same things aren't available for them to come back and also give back and to work with such to work with people and all of that kind of challenges that you've had so one of the challenges I've had is being exposed completely different culture from mine and all that I'm trying to adapt to it for example I come to the cafeteria there's different food I've never tried that before or like the different languages different and also ya like different stories different people so some things I'm like oh I really don't know what that is but like so I'm slowly learning over time yeah okay that's interesting at least we have someone who has that experience to talk to other people so let's get back to you if you could just pass the mic to her so what is the key point since you're an instructor what are the key points that you pass to the other young women and young men who are in the program the key point I like to get across is there is not only one story I think a lot of them look at us because all of the instructors for the young African Scholars Program do go to Yale if your end goal isn't Yale that is okay and there's many different ways of getting to the goals that you have said for yourself we all have different narratives stories well coming from different backgrounds but at the end of the day we all share an ultimate goal we all want to make the same sort of positive impact it's just the ways we get they are different and that is okay a lot of these students are extremely talented it is a 5% acceptance rate it is an extremely competitive program and the fact that they have made it to a program such as the Yale and African Scholars there's so much more that they can achieve and so for them it's really looking at themselves as individuals looking at their own individual strengths my role is just simply to help them discover what that is and to help them get to where they want to be we don't set that goal for them we just help guide them through that entire process so have you had any students who have gone through the program successfully as an example through the Yale African Scholars Program and maybe gone to universities out there yes so this is my first year as an instructor for the Yale African Scholars Program but I was an instructor for the Global Scholars Program I have mentored several students with the application process I have read countless essays and I have seen a lot of success stories students do get to where they need to go and just I've been extremely enlightened just working with them throughout this process because they don't realize and a lot of the times it's weird that they don't acknowledge how great they actually are and sort of being with them to that experience when they from the application process to realizing how great they are to them actually achieving these goals is just probably one of the best parts of being an instructor yes during the program it's great to actually interact with them but continuing to follow up with them and keep track with them and seeing the goals they set back when they were a participant to actually achieving those goals in college is probably the most fulfilling part of being an instructor since now you're in Kenya I want you just to talk to the young people who are watching you right now and tell them why it is important as we wind up why it is important for them to apply to that particular program use that camera sure so I guess to all the young people out there it is 2019 and our generation has extremely complex problems that we are facing and we need interdisciplinary approaches to tackle these problems we need to really understand what the core of these problems are and I think a program like the young African scholars that brings together students from all across the continent is extremely important because at the end of the day we need to learn from each other we need to adapt methods that work in other countries and maybe we could bring them to our own we need to be exposed to instructors from all around the world because their solutions with our indigenous minds could be the key to sort of unlocking the answers to the problems we are facing is what I guess I would tell to all the young people out there so please do apply if you do get the opportunity and I would love to at some point meet you guys as a young African scholar thank you so Lucy I'd like you maybe to share maybe a platform where people can apply if they wanted to apply yes so as I mentioned earlier sometime in October we'll launch the application for next year they just have to go on to the websites young African scholars program and they'll see the application if you have any questions you can also email african.scholarsadio.edu thank you so much yes into UK now that you are the organization that is partnering in Kenya tell them where they can apply for Akili Dada and also for the yes absolutely for anyone who's watching both teachers and the students as I mentioned we are running an educators conference as well please feel free to reach out to info at akilidada.org we will put a hyperlink to Yale's page once the application in October goes live please subscribe to our weekly opportunity because every week we also send opportunities so if you subscribe you will definitely reach the application process when it does get live yes and to you finally if you can just pass the mic just your final thoughts and your final comments my final thoughts are that you should all students out there you should really apply for this program because I've only been here for like three days but the amount of different the new things that I've been exposed to are like are countless and unbelievable so yeah they're amazing so I think that don't hesitate you can apply and if you don't believe in yourself just go for it it's there's no harm to it yeah so much ladies for making time to come and share the important information with us and we wish you all the best so as you've heard from these beautiful ladies there are so many opportunities out there for you you just need to take that step and apply more of e-circuit coming your way so don't you go anywhere