Mission

Empowered to Educate's mission is to increase global wellbeing through women's empowerment and girls' education; by catalyzing women educators as changemakers and innovators. According to the Brookings Institution "When girls are educated, they become educated mothers who are far more likely to encourage both their daughters and sons to go to school and to become more dedicated students. And this is perhaps the greatest return from girls' education: the belief that when a single girl who would have been denied an education receives a high-quality education, it starts a positive cycle of education and empowerment from mother to daughter, generation after generation." Further, being taught by female educators is one of the many factors which ensures the success of girls' education, particularly in areas where there are sanctions against women and girls being in the same educational spaces as men and boys. According to the Global Partnership for Education, in addition to their roles as educators, the benefits of female teachers also include decreased absenteeism and feelings of isolation, increased comfort levels for girl students, the presence of role models and mentors, among others. There is lots of fantastic work being done now to support girls' education, but there is very little which focuses on the female educators who enable them. Thus, Empowered to Educate decided to focus on this group. By identifying and supporting potential 'rock stars" who have not yet made it to the big leagues we know that we will be enabling one of the most important factors for global change and gender equity: female educators will be empowered and educated girls will save the world! Recognition, validation and support can have a profound impact on these educators and Empowered to Educate's Fellowship program will provide just that. According to Rana Dajani, Founder and Executive Director of We Love Reading and Top 100 Most Influential Arab Women: "A lot of people have great ideas, but they are unable to turn their ideas into scalable programs. Many funders support organizations, but not individuals at the grassroots level. These people are unable to turn their dreams into reality or they simply continue to operate at a small scale. Empowered to Educate is a global program which supports emerging female educators with modest program stipends, fellowships, leadership development, mentors and tuitions to conferences and symposia. We will launch our first pilot program in Ghana in conjunction with US and Ghanaian partners including Brandeis University, World Education, and Ashesi University, among others. During our pilot we will award our first ten fellowships and simultaneously exploring the specific alignment of the program elements, the criteria for fellowship selection, expectations of the mentoring process, availability of Ghanaian and other African leadership training, and developing the success measures with the fellows. We are now in the program launch stages with the goal of ten fellows in year one. We hope to announce the first ten Empowered to Educate Fellows in conjunction with International Women's Day, March 8, 2020.