September 10, 2025
As a new semester begins across many schools, colleges, and universities around the globe we are looking back at our 2025 YYAS summer programming. While we continue to run an impactful online program preparing learners for the demands of college admissions and the university academic environment, we moved our 2025 residential program to Nairobi, Kenya for the first time since 2019 where we welcomed 108 learners from 36 countries. In total, the YYAS program served its most diverse cohort yet with 326 scholars competitively selected from 42 countries.
YYAS Online College Prep Workshop
Our online program kicked off on 17 July with a keynote from Yale 2023 World Fellow and deputy CEO of Crisis Action Janah Ncube who gave a rousing speech about the power and agency of African youth in an everchanging world. In his welcome address, our associate director Ryan Pakebusch thanked his colleague at Yale in addition to the telecommunications companies that sponsored data bundle to allow scholars from low-income backgrounds seamlessly attend our week-long online program. This year we worked with MTN in Rwanda and Ghana to support a few dozen of our scholars.
Once again, we had an incredibly talented and compassionate team of undergraduate and graduate instructional staff. This year our 14 instructors came from Washington University in St. Louis, TCU, Stanford, UT Dallas, Berea, Lehigh, Columbia, and Yale. Our instructors facilitated a range of sessions from family time and social impact and career workshops to seminars and college preparatory sessions. The seminars taught at YYAS are meant to prepare scholars for the rigorous academic environment at global universities and instructors prepare these interdisciplinary seminars based on their disciplines and personal interests. This year seminar topics included “Loose Threads: The Overlooked Creative, Economic, and Environmental Realities of What We Wear”, “Youth & Climate Justice: Rethinking Our Role in a Warming World”, “Designing Compassionate Tech: Humanitarian Engineering in Action”, and “African Mythology and Legends: A Storytelling Challenge”.
A core of our programming since the start of YYAS has been college access and preparing scholars for the complex and competitive college admissions process. To help that aspect of that program, we are grateful to the following universities that offered their advice and wisdom: African Leadership University, University of Notre Dame, Yale University, Minerva University, Wesleyan University, Georgetown University Qatar, Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland, and Bryn Mawr College. We look forward to welcoming more institutions to share information and insights with our scholars this fall as they begin to apply to universities across the world.
During the workshop, our scholars are also exposed to the career realities globally and across Africa to help them better understand the world of work. For the first time in our program’s history, we brought YYAS alumni who are college graduates and in the early stages of their careers to speak with our scholars. We had three panels of alumni talk about their experiences in the fields of engineering, law, creative arts, consulting, medicine, biotechnology, and clinical research.
Incorporating the feedback from previous cohorts, we decided to hold “Evening Social Hour” sessions to bring together students in a more relaxed setting to discuss topics such as travel, African music, reality TV, anime, and yes, even the Jollof Wars (note: YYAS and Yale University does not have an official take on who makes the best Jollof).
We look forward to continuing our online presence to reach more scholars in far reaches of the continent in 2026!
YYAS Residential Leadership Summit
Our residential program kicked off on August 9 in Nairobi, Kenya, for the first time since 2019. We are incredibly proud to work with Brookhouse School in Karen who allowed our program to thrive on their beautiful campus (many scholars even compared it to the Hogwarts campus from the Harry Potter franchise). We were also excited to start a collaboration this year with Jambojet to fly high achieving, low-income Kenyans from outside of Nairobi to our program (including one scholar from the Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya) in addition to sharing insights about careers in the aviation industry with our scholars.
This year we hosted three dynamic lecture/panel sessions to expose students to . Our first was a moderated conversation with Wikimedia Foundation CEO and Yale Trustee Maryana Iskander about leading at high levels with purpose amid social, economic, and technological changes. Students had an opportunity to engage with a leader who supports the work of Wikipedia, which remains a top 10 global website used by over a billion users in hundreds of languages. She also gave insights from her years of work in improving youth employment outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa through Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator. Later in the week, channeling the entrepreneurial spirit found in and around Nairobi, we held a moderated panel discussion with leaders from the startup ecosystem, which included Ian Mati, Innocent Magothe, Wangeci Kanjama, and Dr. Wilmot Allen. We ended our lecture series with a visit from Yale School of Medicine faculty member and surgeon Dr. Melanie Sion. Dr. Sion presented on the topic of global surgery in practice, with a specific focus of her work training surgeons in East and Southern Africa. She ended her talk with a lively Kahoot that engaged students to deepen their understanding about medicine and surgical practices. As with our online program, seminars and college admissions workshops were at the core of our program. Some popular seminars this year included Crowning Glory: Hair, Beauty, and Power, Artificial Intelligence: The Power of Questions, and How We Create Knowledge in Science, and When Cells Go Rogue: Exploring Cancer Biology and Emerging Therapies. This year our leadership team Ryan Pakebusch and Maya McCabe also taught seminars in the social science and STEM fields, including physics and diplomacy.
Students engaged with instructors and university admission representatives around a wide variety of topics essential to preparing a strong university application. Through our series of “Uni Guidance” sessions and evening workshops, students talked through all aspects of the process from essay writing, to searching for a good fit school and applying for financial aid. One of the most illuminating parts of this series was the “Uni Real Talk” session where instructors shared their real and candid experience of life on a university campus. This year we hosted a new series called “Campus to Career” which featured conversations about early career exploration during university with YYAS alumni Ivy Aruasa, Dorcas Mwihaki, Edwin Mwai, Celine Kichwen, Rebecca Naisimoi, James Muthoni, and Elijah Peter as well as Gift Kirombo who spoke about his career at JamboJet.Additionally, we were excited to see the creative genius and innovation across our curriculum components Designing for Impact (D4I) and Afro-Imagineering where scholars engage in small teams to work to address both social impact and creative challenge prompts. For instance, in our D4I sessions students worked in areas such as climate change and food security, technology and economic development, and entrepreneurship and activism. In Afro-Imagineering students explored connecting and harmonizing their different cultures across dimensions such as play, fashion, and architecture.
Like our online program, we welcomed admissions officers from Georgetown University Qatar, Akita University/Study in Japan, New York University Abu Dhabi, University of Global Health Equity, University of Notre Dame, Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland, and Minerva University to lead workshops with scholars, hold a local university fair, and lead workshops with local Kenyan educators. We are also grateful to Kenyan YYAS alumni such as Tony Odhiambo and Teddy Nyale who stopped by campus while back home for internships and research to hold informal lunchtime sessions to share their experiences at MIT and Amherst, respectively. Scholars also had some time to see a bit of Nairobi’s wildlife during a visit to the Giraffe Centre. They learned about the centre’s conservation mission and the various ways they can contribute to environmental stewardship. Some also conquered their fear of feeding a giraffe!
On the Horizon
This month, while we will begin recruiting and planning for the 2026 summer programs, we will launch our college advising program with the support of Yale students who will work part-time with us as the review YYAS alumni essays and materials, mentor students on researching majors and universities, and lead additional preparatory sessions on topics such as applying financial aid and preparing for interviews.
As a part of this programming, Alumni are able to receive fee waivers for the Duolingo English Test as well as access to premium test-prep resources provided at no cost by Menking Test Prep. As in 2024, we are able to sponsor a small number of alumni with an SAT fee waiver as well. Last year’s recipients of this waiver have been admitted to a range of institutions including Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Yale, and Williams. Other YYAS alumni will be starting this year at a wide variety of institutions in the US (for example Bowdoin, Brown, Princeton, Spelman College, Tulane, Tufts, and University of Pennsylvania ) and across the globe (African Leadership University, Ashesi University, Edinburgh University, Georgetown University Qatar, Mohammed V University, Science Po, University of Cape Town, and the University of Alberta to name a few). We wish all of our alumni the best of luck as they start this next chapter in their education!
