Social Impact Award for Brandt School student Priscilla Appiah

"In Africa, children with learning disabilities are mostly excluded from the education system. Since schools are not inclusive in this respect, less than ten percent of these children under the age of 14 attend school," Priscilla Appiah knows. And although the education system in her home country of Ghana is considered one of the most advanced systems in Africa, there are still major challenges in educating children with learning disabilities here as well. While there are special schools, she said, they have very few resources. And the prejudice that children with learning disabilities cannot learn at all also persists.

The Brandt School student wants to change that with her "EdTech for Special Learning Needs" project. It aims to transform learning and improve educational outcomes for children with special learning needs in Ghana through customized educational technology solutions and game-based tools to support the learning needs of children ages 6-13. For this initiative, Priscilla Appiah had already received the Commitment Award from the Brandt School and the Engagementpreis-Stiftung this year, and thus a start-up grant of 1,000 euros. Now the Social Impact Award (SIA) Germany has also recognized her project as one of the most promising student social projects. With the prize money, Priscilla Appiah wants to equip selected special schools in Ghana with the EdTech toolkit and thus test it in practice.

The Social Impact Award (SIA) empowers young people to make a difference in more than 15 countries in Europe, Central Asia and Africa. The award supports their development into active agents of change, developing social projects and innovative solutions to the world's most pressing problems. It does this by organizing local social entrepreneurship events and workshops, running incubation programs that help validate and prototype impact and business models, and fostering this global community of resilient social entrepreneurs whose stories raise awareness and inspire local youth to take action.