bold idea
Empower marginalized youth in Pakistan to rediscover and realize their professional dreams by developing their business skills, values, and confidence.
organization overview
Amal Academy is an education venture with a mission to empower marginalized Pakistani youth to rediscover and realize their professional dreams. The Academy offers a Career-Prep Fellowship, an intensive three month business and leadership program that develops the soft business skills, values, and confidence of low-income youth. Their efforts currently focus on students from rural backgrounds who have left their families to study in Lahore.
Personal Bio
Benje is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Amal Academy, an education venture launched in 2013 that uses business principles to help disadvantaged Pakistani youth pursue their professional dreams. Benje realized Pakistan’s incredible (and often overlooked) potential when he moved to Lahore in 2010 to help build the marketing strategy at a growing social enterprise. Prior to this, he worked in Kenya, where he realized how small initiatives can make a tremendous impact. Specifically, he learned this while supporting HIV-positive widows start their own businesses, helping launch a small education resource center with his football team in the Mathare slum, and unsuccessfully launching a waste-to-energy startup. He also realized how complicated poverty alleviation can be while consulting at an Indian ambulance venture and South African healthcare enterprise. Benje initially learned basic business principles as a consultant in New York, and learned love, service and sacrifice from his older sister, eight [adopted] younger siblings and beloved parents in California. He has a BSc in Business Administration and African American Studies from UC Berkeley and a MBA from Stanford University.
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Organization/Fellow Location ?
Our most recent information as to where the Fellow primarily resides.
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Impact Location ?
Countries or continents that were the primary focus of this Fellow’s work at the time of their Fellowship.
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Organization Structure ?
An organization can be structured as a nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid (a structure that incorporates both nonprofit and for-profit elements).
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