IDPF and Harambe Partnership Supports Enrichment Program for Senior High School Students
In late August, IDPF and Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance teamed up to support Ghana's Ashesi University’s annual enrichment program, the Ashesi Innovation Experience (AIX).
AIX is a two-week program for local senior high school students developed by Ashesi’s faculty. The program focuses on building concrete skills for local students in the areas of leadership, design thinking, entrepreneurship, and engineering so that they may be a part of a network of young innovators prepared to help change the face of business, technology, and leadership in Africa.
While AIX is not free for students, scholarships are offered to those who need them. This year, IDPF and Harambe provided a scholarship to local student Jonathan Hagan from Cape Coast International Senior High School, one of the schools that has participated in the IDP Rising Schools Program. The scholarship covered Jonathan’s entire program fee, giving him peace of mind to get the most out of the unique experience. Sixteen-year-old Jonathan is the head prefect at his school. He thoroughly enjoys reading, math and science and has dreams of becoming a journalist. Jonathan says he was looking forward to working on his leadership skills at AIX but ended up also enjoying the Creative Arts Module where he learned about poetry and other artistic expressions.
On the last day of the two-week AIX program, Jonathan and the rest of the students were lucky enough to have two successful entrepreneurs from Harambe share their experiences and lessons learned. IDPF became founding partners of Harambe in 2017 committed to supporting the Alliance in their efforts to build high impact social and business ventures across the African continent. Two such Harambeans, Mr. Kwami Williams, CEO and Co-Founder of Moringa Connect and Mr. Eyram Tawia, CEO and Co-Founder of Leti Arts, spent the day at AIX sharing their feedback on the students’ entrepreneurship projects they had been working on over the two week program. The students were also able to learn about the first-hand successes and challenges of entrepreneurship from the Harambe leaders.
As founding partners of Harambe, IDPF was enthusiastic about working alongside them to enhance the consistently successful AIX program and allow one more student the opportunity to attend.