About

YES has its roots in a vision of social justice and refugee empowerment through post-secondary education that would benefit both students and our community.


Starting in 2015, this vision by InZone (University of Geneva) was generously supported by Open Society Foundations and allowed a growing refugee management team to design the implementation of formal and non-formal higher education
courses offered by the University of Geneva-InZone, Princeton University, Purdue University and MIT, as well as through the Coursera for Refugees program.


Our roots in the Kakuma/Kalobeyei community have enabled us to increase our outreach to qualified post-secondary learners, and through our social-emotional learning program, applied arts and sports, which we incorporated in 2019, we
have built strong ties with the community.


In 2020 we realized our vision of establishing ourselves as independent refugee-led organization, currently hosted by Women’s Educational Researchers of Kenya (WERK), specialized in offering an engaging, holistic and contextualised
higher education experience to university students in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, built on quality digital pedagogy, 21st Century skills and Social-Emotional-Learning frameworks to university and other education partners interested
in making their programs available to refugees in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, or keen to partner with us on participatory action research projects.

We are designed to collaborate with partner organizations and research institutions around the world. Here are a few ways in which we work:   

We have mapped out the personal growth journey young people undertake as they work with our teams and participate in programs. At every step of the way, we have built programs that support and foster personal bests.    

The YES team is made up of refugee activists who have participated in core programs and are based out of Kakuma, Kenya.