The funding will assist the African NGO’s vocational coaching and college education schemes for low-income college students and refugees throughout Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, drastically boosting incomes potential.
Malengo, a non-profit group enabling worldwide academic migration and financial empowerment for younger folks from East Africa, as we speak introduced it has secured $12.9 million in funding from The Shapiro Basis. Structured as an revolutionary influence funding, the funding will permit Malengo to considerably broaden its vocational coaching and college sponsorships to over 700 college students in Germany over the following three years.
Based in 2021 by Cornell College Professor Johannes Haushofer, Malengo’s mission is to unlock the total potential of scholars from low-income backgrounds in Africa, the place nearly 600 million folks survive on lower than $3 a day. By facilitating entry to larger schooling and profession alternatives in high-income international locations, Malengo—rooted in rigorous analysis—demonstrates that academic mobility can drastically enhance lifetime earnings and monetary safety.
Since its launch, Malengo has enrolled over 500 students, unlocking schooling, abilities, and pathways to worldwide profession alternatives in fields resembling healthcare, IT, and different expert trades. The typical incoming scholar lives on $1.40 per day earlier than program entry; this system prepares them for graduate jobs in Europe with beginning salaries above $40,000 per 12 months. As a result of college students and graduates usually ship cash dwelling, this system transforms lives not only for particular person college students, however for complete communities.
The Shapiro Basis, which started working with Malengo in 2024, has reaffirmed its sturdy confidence within the group with a $12.9 million funding, prompted by the success and progress of Malengo’s early cohorts. The funding will allow Malengo to scale its current work in Uganda and Kenya and broaden operations into Rwanda, the place it has launched its first cohort of 53 refugee students this 12 months.
“Malengo is addressing probably the most urgent challenges of our time by making a sturdy answer and a path to self-reliance for refugees, whereas on the similar time demonstrating refugees’ contribution to a vacation spot nation’s economic system. We’ve seen the extraordinary progress Malengo has achieved over the previous a number of years, and that success is strictly why we’re deepening our dedication. Malengo combines readability of imaginative and prescient with integrity, execution, and measurable influence, and we’re proud to face alongside them at this pivotal stage of their progress.”
— Ed Shapiro, Trustee, The Shapiro Basis
“The assist from the Shapiro Basis is a crucial vote of confidence in Malengo’s mission. I based Malengo as a result of worldwide academic migration has the potential to dramatically and durably scale back excessive poverty not just for particular person college students, however for complete households and communities. This new funding by the Shapiro Basis will allow us to broaden into a brand new nation, strengthen our current packages, and rework hundreds of lives.”
— Professor Johannes Haushofer, Founder & CEO, Malengo
Malengo employs a sustainable Earnings Share Settlement (ISA) mannequin, initially piloted at Yale College within the Nineteen Seventies and more and more adopted in Germany for the reason that Nineteen Nineties. Below this mannequin, students obtain full monetary assist upfront—overlaying college prices, dwelling bills, language courses, and mentorship. Repayments begin solely as soon as students graduate and procure jobs incomes above a minimal earnings threshold, guaranteeing no monetary burden throughout low-income intervals. This regenerative system allows every cohort to finance the following, multiplying influence throughout generations.
“Being within the Malengo program has been probably the most thrilling alternatives of my life. Malengo is greater than only a scholarship program—it’s a neighborhood that believes in younger folks from underprivileged backgrounds and provides them the instruments to dream massive and obtain these desires in Germany.”
— Hellen Akubac Lual, Malengo Scholar
Malengo has additionally benefited from early assist by traders, together with GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, the Livelihood Impression Fund, and others, to put the inspiration for its progress. Right this moment, a devoted staff of 20 full-time workers operates throughout East Africa and Germany with the aim of assuaging excessive poverty.
