Education & Knowledge Development

Education is the reason ADAM exists. The Academy was founded in 2010 by minority students who had seen how quickly a child from a marginalised household drops out of the school system — and how permanently that shapes the rest of their life. Everything else in our portfolio grows out of this work.

Why this matters

Children from Somaliland’s minority communities enter school later, leave earlier and are far less likely to reach secondary or higher education than their peers. The barriers are rarely a single thing: school fees and uniforms are unaffordable, families need the child’s income, classrooms can be unwelcoming, and there are very few teachers or role models from the same background. Each barrier removed on its own achieves little, so ADAM works on all of them together.

What we do

• Sponsor school places, uniforms and learning materials for minority children who would otherwise not enrol.
• Run enrolment and retention campaigns with parents, elders and head teachers before every school year.
• Support minority students through secondary school and into university, including mentoring and exam preparation.
• Deliver teacher training on inclusive classroom practice, literacy and numeracy techniques.
• Run adult literacy and numeracy circles for parents, so learning is reinforced at home.
• Recognise and celebrate graduates publicly, to build a visible pipeline of minority professionals.

How we work

We do not build a parallel school system. ADAM works inside the existing public and community schools of Somaliland, alongside the Ministry of Education, head teachers and parent committees, so that gains outlast any single project cycle. Our role is to remove the barrier that stops a particular child from walking through the gate, and then to keep watch until that child finishes.