Pestalozzi International is proud to announce funding for the next cohort of Our Moon Education's Young Leaders Programme in Lusaka, Zambia.
Our Moon was co-founded by Justin Mushitu, a Pestalozzi alumnus of our UK Village, who returned to Zambia determined to open doors for the next generation of brilliant but financially disadvantaged young people from his home country. The programme he helped build sits squarely within the Head, Heart and Hands tradition that shaped his own education.
About the programme
The Young Leaders Programme is Our Moon's flagship offering. It bridges the year-long gap between finishing high school and starting university - a gap that, without support, sees outstanding Zambian students lose out on international scholarships and slip back into the poverty cycle they have worked so hard to escape.
The programme is structured around four sections - reflection, alignment, balance and self-reflection - and is delivered through intensive teaching, mentoring and project work. To graduate, students complete a community project and a 4,000-word, fully referenced research essay exploring global issues through a Zambian lens, supervised by mentors from the International School of Geneva (Ecolint).
Head, Heart and Hands in practice
Head: rigorous critical-thinking, research and academic-writing instruction that turns excellent high-school graduates into the kind of confident, curious applicants who stand out at international universities and on competitive scholarships.
Heart: a deep emphasis on community and social responsibility - students are encouraged to look hard at the challenges around them and ask what they, personally, owe in response. Gender balance is a deliberate design choice, with the programme actively recruiting equal numbers of young women and young men.
Hands: a community project planned and executed by the students themselves, applying primary research skills, group facilitation and project management - real work that benefits a real community while the students are still on the programme.
Outcomes
Young Leaders graduates have gone on to win places at prestigious universities across the globe, to set up their own NGOs, to launch initiatives in their home communities, to take up purposeful careers and to complete impactful internships. Each cohort steadily widens the pipeline of Zambian-led leadership in education, civil society, business and government.
Why we are funding this
Backing Our Moon is a clear expression of two things we believe: that the most effective programmes are built by leaders who have lived the realities they address, and that our alumni are the most powerful multiplier of Pestalozzi's mission. Justin's journey - from a Pestalozzi student in the UK to the co-founder of a programme transforming the prospects of brilliant young Zambians - is exactly the kind of long-arc impact our model is designed to produce.
Funding the next Young Leaders cohort means more outstanding Zambian school leavers will get the bridge they need to reach world-class universities and to come home ready to lead.
