Barnaba, the first Amala alumnus to run a Changemaker Course through his organisation Teach for Community, shares his story
Barnaba in the Teach for Community space
My biggest dream is to transform my life and my community. I come from Sudan, a war torn country. I always wanted to be a software engineer, but I never completed high school, because my final exams were cancelled. Instead, I did more than 25 short courses - in leadership, innovation, peacebuilding, graphic design, entrepreneurship, and computer skills. But I still faced a huge barrier - I didn’t have the opportunity to finish school and chase my dream of becoming a software engineer.
Then one day my friend told me he was learning on the other side of Kakuma. He showed me Aula (Amala’s learning platform), and I thought “wow, this is amazing!” I made sure he reached out to me when Amala was recruiting for the next cohort of the Global Secondary Diploma, and when that happened, I applied straight away.
Barnaba on GSD graduation day
Amala has impacted my life and my community. I wish Amala could be the curriculum that is offered at mainstream schools here in Kenya! The curriculum is amazing. In simple terms, it’s practical, whereby the knowledge is useful outside the classroom. Mahatma Gandhi said, “to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” For me, this summarises what the team do at Amala. The educators are excellent. They have passion, energy, connection, and coordination. The community they create is awesome.
When I was young and my friends asked me what I wanted to be, I said a software engineer, working in cybersecurity. I want to provide a safe digital space for governments and local people in Sudan. And I’m still dreaming of doing cybersecurity. I feel so inspired by technology. I help others to create campaigns, pages and professional accounts, and I work in the field through platforms like Upwork and Fiver. Through Amala, I’ve improved my prospects and secured opportunities - when I shared my Amala transcript with RealTerm, I secured a learning pathway in technology.
My initiative, Teach for Community, was inspired by the Amala Global Secondary Diploma programme and my dream of becoming a software engineer. My time at Amala helped me to create the vision for it. One of the things I learnt at Amala is that when you do a survey, difficulties which arise in the survey results usually reveal where the challenges are. Teach for Community focuses on technology skills, because at the rate at which technology is developing, it’s really affecting refugee society, particularly women. I did a survey in Kakuma Camp, and it emerged that one of the reasons why women aren’t self-sufficient and don’t have access to jobs is because they are lacking digital skills to use the platforms which open up opportunities.
Barnaba and Mayen, Amala’s Head of Kenya Programmes, on the Teach for Community site in Kakuma
By 2030, Kenya will be digitalised. But what about the people who are being left behind? What about our mothers? I want to be their voice. If a mother is educated, she can educate the family, the child, and society as a whole. Women in the camp come from many backgrounds, and a high percentage of women from neighbouring countries become teenage mothers. This is a barrier to their learning. So at Teach for Community, we have grouped our beneficiaries into two: mothers aged 25-40, and teenage mothers who, because they had a child at a young age, are unable to pursue their academic journey and become self-reliant.
And it’s not just digital skills training that we offer - we’ve already reached more than 300 women with social entrepreneurship training. Some of them have become self-sufficient through starting kiosks and selling vegetables. We also run a programme for children, ‘money pocket concept’, training for children aged 8 to 15 in financial literacy. I struggled to get funding for this project, but with what I did get I bought flipcharts and colours, so that we could use tools like graffiti with the children, telling stories through drawing, and interpreting each others’ art.
In September 2023, I registered Teach for Community with UNHCR, with Amala as a key part of my journey. Amala has given me hope that I can turn it into reality. So far, Teach for Community has 11 core members, with an additional 14 supporters who help out occasionally—many of them my colleagues from Amala. We have the knowledge, the vision, and the drive—and now we will be running our first Amala Changemaker Course, Social Entrepreneurship, to bring learning to the community, make an impact and help address global challenges.