Ugandan Schools2030 educator empowers girls to develop STEM skills

Jamila Mayanja started her innovation - Girls with Tools - to skill vulnerable young women who are out of school, in male-dominated STEM skill sets. The program takes on girls who have little to no educational background, from both urban and rural areas.

A challenge Jamila and her team faced early on was ensuring that the young women could reach their program and had the money to buy the tools to practise. Using a Human Centred Design (HCD) solution, Jamila and her team came up with the idea for a  ‘tools library’, and Schools2030 in Uganda then helped to equip and buy tools for the girls to borrow. 

“We placed ourselves in their shoes, and we kept on trying to find out how we can help them solve the issue and give them sustainable lifestyles.”

Jamila Mayanja, Founder and Team Leader at Smart Girls Uganda

Another issue the program faced was that it was hard for some students to reach them. Once again they used a HCD solution and came up with the idea for ‘a class on wheels’. This enabled Jamila and her team to take the class to girls in their communities, as well as being able to show off the girls who had graduated, so that their local communities could appreciate that STEM jobs are also possible for girls. 

“I have a dream of not only empowering young girls in Uganda, but all over Africa.”

Jamila Mayanja, Founder and Team Leader at Smart Girls Uganda

Jamila dreams of creating a vocational university, and wants young women to know that dropping out of school is not the end of them - “we have the power to change their narrative, to change their story. And that is giving them the skills to sustain themselves.”

Watch Jamila Mayanja discuss her work with Smart Girls Uganda.