Teach for Community: Amala alumnus Barnaba creates learning opportunities in Kakuma
Barnaba always wanted to start something meaningful. Whilst he was learning with Amala on the Global Secondary Diploma in 2022, he founded Teach for Community, a community-based organisation which has gone from strength to strength.
In April 2025, Amala first partnered with Teach for Community to run our Social Entrepreneurship Changemaker Course with a group of women and young people in Kakuma, where participants create solutions for issues they witness in their communities and build confidence in their ability to shape their own futures.
Since then, more than 150 students have graduated from Changemaker Courses through Barnaba’s organisation. The partnership with Teach for Community represents a full-circle moment for Amala: the first organisation founded by an Amala alumnus to run Amala courses.
Teach for Community focuses on digital skills and coding for women and young people, alongside courses in social entrepreneurship. They run a course called “Pocket Money Concept” for children to develop money management skills, currently offered to 70 children aged 3 to 12. It was during an Amala project that Barnaba was inspired to create the Pocket Money Concept: “I went to do a community survey, and spoke to kids. The programme was inspired by a child who was crying to her mum that she wanted a small bike, because her neighbour had a bike. Pocket Money concept is a way for children to understand that not everyone is financially equal, and that society is unequal”.
The main challenge, says Barnaba, is meeting the need. Teach for Community receives more applicants than is possible to serve through their programmes. The introduction of differentiated assistance in Kakuma Refugee Camp has caused difficulty, explains Barnaba, and displaced even more people. Women who are in categories 3 and 4 have almost no access to food, which is one of the reasons Teach for Community targets mothers and women with their programmes - people who are often excluded from education.
Above: the construction of Teach for Community’s new space
Scaling up to meet the huge demand is a key focus for Teach for Community, and has driven Barnaba to seek out partnership opportunities with many organisations. They collaborate with Cohere, a partnership which “Amala has made possible”, says Barnaba. “And if you’re under the umbrella of Cohere, you are more trusted as an organisation”. Teach for Community are seeking funding from NGOs to construct an ICT lab - and have just completed the construction of a new and improved space as their reach and programmes grow.
Barnaba’s passion for cybersecurity has also led him to partner Teach for Community with organisations like AVY Academic, which empowers young entrepreneurs with technology, tools and training. Other partnerships are on the horizon too: with Nadeum, a German implementation partner, and organisations in Kakuma like Dom Bosco and Danish Church Aid in order to expand Teach for Community’s impact and reach through literacy programmes and agricultural entrepreneurship.
Above: the Teach for Community graduation in February 2025
“Creating impact through the same model as Amala is my biggest dream”, says Barnaba. At a pitching day at Amala in 2022, Barnaba honed his pitching and presentation skills, which have since helped him to win small grants for Teach for Community. Project management strategies - prioritising tasks for implementation - and leadership strategies that he learnt at Amala are “the base of everything”, affirms Barnaba.
Barnaba is proud of the progress that Teach for Community has already made - “responding to something urgent that I felt I must do something about”.
Above video: Nabil, a student at Teach for Community, describes the impact that Teach for Community has had on him and the challenges he faced in accessing learning in Kakuma Camp.