Everyday Community Designer for #Kampala and #Education: Penina Acayo

“When you look at the Eurocentric education system of Kampala, a lot of what the curriculum teaches is not relevant to the 21st century needs of the marketplace in Uganda. Over 70% of the population is under the age of 30, so every year thousands of graduates come out of institutions of higher learning searching for jobs. But those jobs aren’t there anymore so we are not rethinking our education system quickly enough to give our graduates the skills necessary to be productive in the marketplace. To address this, I’ve been running creative problem solving workshops in Uganda to teach youth how to fail as quickly as possible to learn more, as well as to apply problem-solving skills to any topic that is relevant to them.

While facilitating those workshops for the first time in 2014, I was surprised by how easily collaboration came for participants. Strangers who didn’t know each other just came together and put aside their genders to rally around the issue as a group. I was lucky to witness the magic happen while they were having debates and coming to a consensus. It gives me so much energy thinking about it because people might just dismiss those youth as coming from a third world country.”

Penina is a member of the Creative Reaction Lab board and an Assistant Professor for Communication Design at Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Kampala, she is the founder of Design.Ed Uganda a summer program for youth to learn about design thinking. Connect with her on Linkedin.