Illiteracy rates in West Africa were the highest in the world in 2009, and despite significant gains in primary school enrolment rates in recent years, the adult literacy rate is still below 50% in several countries in the region.

The underlying problem is glaringly clear: enrolling in school does not guarantee a young person will be literate upon graduation or that they will be able to secure a sustainable and meaningful livelihood in today’s dynamic market.

“Students in sub-Saharan Africa leave school without the basic learning skills to escape the gravitational pull of mass poverty and to create opportunities for themselves in the job market,” says Cameroon-born Madelle Kangha, 24. “Building schools doesn’t necessarily result in higher literacy, post-graduation employment rates or even increased education.”

When it comes to ways forward, Kangha points out that young people who find themselves in real-world, hands-on learning spaces are more willing to take risks and pursue their dreams. “They see a shift,” she says. “Their perception of themselves and what they can bring to the table changes.”

“We can see the impact on the students and within the school. More students are becoming leaders.”

Kangha teamed up with her partner, Nigerian social entrepreneur Omotola Akinsola, to offer an alternative to the lacklustre, insulated learning environments widely available. Together they decided not to simply build another school house but to co-found Jumpstart Academy Africa. The academy partners with existing schools in Cameroon and Nigeria to create improved learning environments, equipping young people with the skills that will make them assets for any work environment in the 21st century.

Using a student-based and interactive approach to learning, the Academy’s curriculum cultivates critical thinking, ethical leadership, an entrepreneurial approach to problem solving and civic engagement, helping hundreds of young people between 14 and 18 become valued contributors to the job market.

Although the schools provide Jumpstart with facilities – classrooms, meeting halls, etc – “only a fraction of our lessons happen in the classroom,” Kangha says. “It means we have a deeper connection with the students, and we are able to challenge cultural perceptions, especially when it comes to the education of girls.”

Some 70% of Jumpstart’s students are girls, selected for their academic performance, ideas for local solutions and their drive to be change-makers. In the next two years, these high school students will receive support and mentorship from local university students and professionals who help them put business, entrepreneurship and community initiative ideas into action.

The community-level input is embedded into every part of the programme: case studies, guest speakers, prototype sessions and team-building exercises are taken from a local or African context, to serve as motivation for ambitious young change-makers.

“It really makes it seem like part of the school experience for them, which has been essential to what we do. This is not just some other random thing they go to in their spare time,” Kangha says. “We make it very dynamic.”

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The programme even serves to activate reluctant entrepreneurs – tomorrow’s job creators – such as 17-year-old Massa. She was shy and reserved, but under Jumpstart’s tuition she began hosting a radio programme with the goal of educating her local community about leadership and social entrepreneurship. Massa is now one of 50 young Africans who have been selected to be in the first cohort of the Yale Young African Scholars Program.

Another student, Jude, began with average grades but is now at university after taking his A-levels a year early.

A third student, 17-year-old Joyce, had previously struggled to pay for all the books required for school. But after one school break, she returned with all of her schoolbooks in hand – she had put her entrepreneurship lessons into action and started generating an income by cooking and selling food in offices.

Teachers are not left behind. The academy’s programme engages educators to take part in the business training activities themselves. Teachers can then use these training sessions to guide and complement their more traditional classroom instruction.

“We can see the impact on the students and within the school. More students are becoming leaders. Within the community, the schools are now becoming the pride of their towns,” said Kangha. “For each student, the impact is different, but it’s still powerful.”

Kangha and Akinsola hope to reach more than 17,000 young people in the next five years. They also aim to spread the model through partnerships and even by working with the government to incorporate components of Jumpstart Academy Africa into national education curricula.

First published by Forbes in partnership with Ashoka

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Juliet Davenport has an impressive CV. She’s the founder and chief executive of Good Energy, a visionary energy company that sources all its power from local, renewable sources across the UK. The company has won several awards including the Sunday Times Best Green Company and the Observer’s Ethical Award for best online retail initiative. In 2012 Davenport was named as PLUS CEO of the year, and at the beginning of 2013 she was awarded an OBE for her services to the renewable energy sector.

Positive News: Why did you start up Good Energy? Where did the idea for such an organisation originate from?

Davenport: The journey really started when I was at university. I did metrology as part of my final degree and we were studying climate change, looking at the issues, and I thought, “Right, this is the area I want to do something about.” I wasn’t quite sure where to go from there, but I realised that I needed to understand more about the energy market, which is a key driver in terms of carbon emissions. I spent some time in Brussels looking at European energy policy, understanding the European and worldwide energy scene, what the drivers were, and then came back to the UK and got quite disappointed with the lack of progress on renewable policy here. But I was lucky enough to meet an entrepreneur from Germany who felt the same, and together we thought, let’s try to create a retail product and involve individuals in making this change.

How do you view the role of renewables moving forward?

Renewables is a really interesting area because it challenges a lot of the old-fashioned thinking around energy. First of all, it’s not big and centralised. It’s actually de-centralised – it’s among the people – so it becomes communities and individuals that host renewables. The issue you’ve got is that it’s not always there, it does change because of the weather, so that’s something that’s a challenge, but there are lots of ways technologies and human behaviour can meet that challenge.

Do you think it is possible for consumers and communities to be empowered through renewables?

Completely. The thing about renewables is that it gives people the opportunity to actually own and operate power systems themselves. So traditionally we’ve just switched on the lights and completely forgotten about the very large coal or gas power station at the end of the wires, chugging away producing the power that we need – by generating our own, we’re aware of energy. I did a small study on the original people that signed up with us, who did generate their power through solar, and around 65% of those people used less energy as a result of installing those solar panels.

What are your thoughts on the investment opportunities involved in renewables, particularly in regards to community ownership schemes?

I think it really depends on the communities. Some communities will be very capable because they will have people within those communities who will understand how to make investments, and I think we’ve seen that already with certain initiatives. One of the best examples is probably Westmill Farm, where Adam Twine, who is the organic farmer that owns the land, has invested in a solar farm and a windfarm. Essentially, Adam worked to get the site developed, and then the community bought that back from the developer once it was built. Adam is just a visionary, he’s brilliant.

You’ve also got the Isle of Gigha in Scotland, where the community has put three turbines in. They raised the money themselves through various funds and that is now a long-term annuity to that island. Could you tell us more about the Good Energy local tariff initiative?

One of the things that was repeated every time I went and talked to people about developing windfarms was, ‘How can I benefit from it? Can I buy cheap electricity?’. In this case, with the windfarm in Delabole in Devon, we had to wait until the windfarm was operational, and then did a load of work on the regulatory aspect of it all, but found that yes, that could happen, and we were then able to sell power to approximately 250 homes within 2km of the site at a 20% discount.

Do you hope to roll it out in more places across the UK?

Yes, that’s the plan, that every windfarm has its own community that is supplied with energy at a discount. A lot of farms are in rural communities that have issues with infrastructure and wealth creation, and what we’re trying to do is to put some wealth back into those areas, so it becomes more cost-effective to live there.

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Good Business is a column hosted by Anna Levy from HUB Islington, an incubation space for socially driven entrepreneurs. Each month she catches up with the people leading change.

Anna: Hi Kate. Tell me about your business in a nutshell.

Kate: I run an ethical cleaning company called Ultimately Eco, which I launched in 2007. We only use environmentally friendly products and educate our staff in the importance of green practices. We also pay them all a fair London Living Wage.

How did it start?

As with many recent immigrants, I started part-time cleaning work as an easy entry into the job market. Coming from outside the EU (Bulgaria), the only way to get work legally was to be self-employed, so I took cleaning contracts alongside other casual work. What I really wanted to do though was to start a business of my own – one based on my personal principles and values, rather than somebody else’s.

Somebody suggested I start my own cleaning business and I really wasn’t keen at first. But I soon realised that there was potential here to do something good for the world and still make a living. I went from being a reluctant entrepreneur to a social entrepreneur!

What was the potential you saw in cleaning?

Cleaning is a large industry sector – at the time the UK cleaning industry was worth around £11bn – and I realised it could be a way to educate people about green issues.

My first focus was on the environmental and health impacts of cleaning. There are 30,000 manmade chemicals in the EU, many used in cleaning products, and only a small number have been properly safety-tested. You don’t need to be an expert to know how toxic some of these chemicals are – spray oven cleaner onto your cooker and you’re choking!

At the same time, I realised there was a problem in the way cleaners saw themselves and their work, and recognised the need for a shift in attitude. Cleaning is considered a low-skilled profession and of low importance, which really affects the motivation of those working in the industry.

Did you find it hard establishing yourself in the market?

There’s a lot of green-wash in the cleaning industry (so to speak!). Everyone is saying they’re green and ethical, but you can tell from their websites that they don’t really get it. We’ve worked with the CHEM Trust, using their research on harmful manmade chemicals to inform our strategy and communications, and we worked with sustainability consultancy Future Conversations to go carbon neutral – which we achieved in the last year!

How do you balance staying true to your values while making the business commercially viable? What kind of difficult decisions have you had to make along the way?

We had offers from several business partners, but declined, because they weren’t operating under the same values. Through these partnerships, we could have grown faster and had more influence, but it would have been at the cost of our principles.

It’s becoming harder to remain competitive as the market is swamped with ‘green’ cleaners charging lower rates. We haven’t cut our prices because of our determination to maintain a fair wage for our staff, and this has meant us losing business on occasion. What people don’t realise is that if you are getting a cheap deal, someone is almost certainly getting exploited.

Proudest moment so far?

Winning one of 25 placements on a business training programme run by the Goldman Sachs Foundation. This affirmed my business knowledge and taught me how we can grow, as well as introducing me to a new network of successful entrepreneurs. Getting onto the programme has really validated the choices I’ve made and it’s great that a company like Goldman Sachs is acknowledging the trend for socially and environmentally responsible business.

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An 18-year-old has published a new book featuring interviews with 20 acclaimed entrepreneurs under 35. Who Said You Can’t Be Young And Successful?, published in July, also offers tips and advice on how to start up a business at a young age.

Blessing Maragere, vice president of the UK Youth Chamber of Commerce, wrote the book while studying as a sixth form student at David Young Community Academy in Leeds.

“It is just as important as everyday education that young people are encouraged to be business minded,” said Blessing, “in order to not only build new businesses but also to cut unemployment.”

Blessing launched a contract cleaning company in Leeds when he was just 16 years old. This early success motivated him to encourage other young people to start up their own businesses.

Partnering with another young businessman, Sean Hamilton, Blessing set up a ‘boot camp’ in 2010 to help young people create projects for community benefit, which was supported by Live Unltd, a foundation for social entrepreneurs.

The event inspired Blessing to interview some of the top young business minds in the world, including Carly Ward, herself a founder of a network for young entrepreneurs (the Young Entrepreneur Society).

“I was honoured to be included in the book,” said Carly. “I hope that my contribution will help many others strive for success and achieve their full potential in life.”

Development manager at Live Unltd, Joanne Rich, said: “Blessing’s entrepreneurial spirit and his commitment to changing the world for the better are inspirational.”

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