Aga Khan Academies Celebrate Graduating 1,000 Global Leaders
Start of 2022-2023 academic year
The 2022-2023 academic year at the Aga Khan Academy Maputo will start on Monday, 8 August 2022. Welcome back students and staff!
Staff orientation for the 2022-2023 academic year
Videos
The Aga Khan Academy Maputo is committed to developing future leaders by delivering Excellence in Education. We offer merit-based admission to our International Baccalaureate (IB) programme at our purpose-built world-class campus in Maputo, Mozambique. Watch our newly released video to learn more about our unique offering.
The International Baccalaureate featured the Aga Khan Academies and our approach to creating home-grown leaders as part of their 50th anniversary commemoration. Watch to learn how the Academies work to transform the communities in which they are located.
This is Abdirahman, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. During his time at the Academy, he explored his wide-ranging abilities and developed an initiative that helped change the lives of young girls in Mombasa.
Meet Abdalla, a Somali student from the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. He shares his journey of self-discovery: Abdalla solidified his multiple identities, fostered his strengths, and created positive social change during his years at the Academy.
Women and girls are strong, fearless, courageous, limitless, and powerful. The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad celebrated International Women's Day on 8 March 2018 with this video.
Video by AFD – Agence Française de Développement about how children at the Aga Khan Academy Maputo "Dare to Dream Big" in their new school facilities. The Aga Khan Academy in Maputo, Mozambique has been growing since it opened its doors in 2013. The second phase extension was completed in early 2018 and included bigger classrooms, extended outdoor play areas, a library, an art room and a science lab.
This is Mercy, a teacher at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa who joined through the Teacher Preparation Programme. Mercy fosters profound and meaningful relationships with everyone around her and consistently encourages her students to be the best versions of themselves.
Meet Sadiq, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. Open-mindedness, confidence and time management are some of the many characteristics he has developed at the Academy that will help him achieve his dream of becoming a journalist.
Meet Saumya, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. A musician and a leader, she shares her wisdom on what it means to make a true positive impact.
Introducing Ivy, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. Her innate drive for self-growth and desire to give back to the community makes her a true home-grown leader.
Meet Felix, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. With a keen early interest in science, he shares his dreams for the future and explains how the Academies have helped foster his ambitions.
This is Stephen, a student at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. His passion for community service shines as he expresses the growth in perspective he experienced through his education at the Academy.
A day at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa's Junior School, seen through the eyes of the students.
Students and teachers from the Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad are featured in this film from the International Baccalaureate about the Middle Years Programme.
This film by the International Baccalaureate highlights the impact being made by students from the Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad through a service initiative at a local government school.
July 2017 video showing progress on the construction of the Aga Khan Academy Maputo's campus.
The aim of the Aga Khan Academies is to develop future leaders with the skills and knowledge to support positive development in their societies. The Academies achieve this by recruiting exceptional young people from all backgrounds and providing them with the highest international standard of education.
The Aga Khan Academies are a global network of schools that produce future leaders who are ethical, effective and pluralistic.
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Happy New Year from the Aga Khan Academies
Dear friends of the Aga Khan Academies,
Happy New Year to you and your families from all of us at the Aga Khan Academies.
As we look toward 2018, I’m pleased to share with you some of the exciting developments that the Academies are anticipating for the coming year.
Across the Aga Khan Development Network, we will be continuing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan, marking 60 years of his enlightened leadership as the Imam of the Ismaili Muslims and founder of the AKDN. The Jubilee commemorations began on 11 July 2017 and will continue until July 2018. The Aga Khan Academies have been running two social media initiatives in honour of the Diamond Jubilee – Academies ‘Journeys’ and ‘60 Stories for 60 Years’ – and these will continue through this July. I hope you are enjoying them.
The Jubilee year marks a time of increasing expansion of the Aga Khan Academies. Construction of the full campus for our third Academy in Maputo, Mozambique has proceeded rapidly, and our students and staff are looking forward to the opening of the beautiful new school buildings that will house students from grades 3–7 in the very near future. The Academy in Maputo also expanded their curricular offering this academic year, having introduced the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme, which has been received very well by our students and teachers.
I’m also very pleased to share that our fourth Aga Khan Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh will begin construction in 2018. The design for the forthcoming Academy won the award for best ‘Future Education’ project at the World Architecture Festival 2017. We’re looking forward to seeing the vision behind the award-winning design come to life, to provide talented students from Bangladesh and the region with a world-class education, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
In 2018 we will also be celebrating 15 years of the Aga Khan Academies network, with our first Academy in Mombasa, Kenya having opened in 2003. During the past 15 years, the Academies have pioneered innovative approaches in a multitude of areas, including the cross-curricular Aga Khan Strands, approaches to leadership development and service learning, campus design for a well-rounded education, talent identification, and developing local teachers into IB practitioners, amongst others. As our network grows, we are continuing to see the power of becoming a global, closely integrated and pluralistic learning community that allows sharing of ideas, expertise and thinking across varied contexts and cultures.
We greatly value your support for the Aga Khan Academies and our collective effort towards creating a better future through education.
Wishing you and your families the very best for 2018.
Warm regards,
Salim A.L. Bhatia
Director of Academies
Aga Khan Schools Annual Publication 2021
Karishma Bhagani (Class of 2015): Making a splash for clean water
Look below for a video of Karishma speaking at the Passion in Science Awards.
Last year, 20-year-old Karishma Bhagani of Mombasa, Kenya was awarded a seed grant at the NYU Reynolds Changemaker Challenge, beating out eight other teams and 46 other projects. Bhagani won the seed grant for an innovative water purification system that makes the most of natural resources in cash-strapped communities that need clean water. Her initiative, Matone De Chiwit, came about as a solution to a problem she noticed: more and more diseases were emerging as a result of fluctuating weather in the country, ranging from floods to drought conditions. She knew that something had to be done.
Matone De Chiwit means “drops of life” in three different languages. Matone means drops in Kiswahili (Kenya), de means “of” in Spanish (Latin America) and chiwit means “Life” in Thai (Thailand). These three languages represent the three parts of the world that suffer the most from clean water scarcity. It also speaks to the global nature of her venture, as Bhagani intends to expand her project to these three regions and beyond.
Aga Khan Academy as an Inspiration
Bhagani is a fourth-generation Kenyan who recently moved to New York City where she is studying drama, history and South Asian studies at New York University. The Aga Khan Development Network has always been a part of her life as she was one of 17 students at the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa who made up the first class to have been educated from pre-school to IB graduate.
The biggest lesson that Bhagani drew from her education is to be a holistic student. She strives to be as well rounded as possible, striking a balance between a social life, sleep, work and school, all with the goal of making a global impact. This pursuit of balance was inspired by her many years at the Aga Khan Academy.
“I think that at the end of the day what everything comes down to is how we can be citizens of the world and how we can change the world that we live in to make it a better place for ourselves and children that follow us. And part of that also means giving back to your own community,” said Bhagani.
When she was in middle school, she was required to carry out a personal project on something that inspired her. Having noticed the drastic fluctuations of weather and rampant diseases in her country, Bhagani decided that she would come up with an innovative water purification system that uses readily accessible natural resources. Her initiative uses locally available materials – sand, gravel, charcoal and cotton cloth – to purify water for villagers all across Kenya. The initial version of the product also used chlorine tablets called Aquapur. Bhagani received generous sponsorship funding from Davis & Shirtliff, a local water supply company, for donating 20 units to a community to test for effectiveness. “A lot of the families said that the water was ‘tamu sana’ which in English means very sweet,” said Bhagani.
Before Bhagani came up with her product, local families were typically just drinking untreated water, using a lot of energy to boil it on charcoal-heated stoves or using Aquapur chlorine tablets.
Testing and Improving
Through testing and implementation in villages, Bhagani and her partners came to the realization that using chlorine in a plastic container might not be the best idea. These tablets can actually be dangerous to human health — high doses can be potentially harmful as the plastic in the bottles reacts with the chlorine, resulting in the spread of more serious illnesses. So they decided to change it to moringa oleifera, essentially dried seed kernels of drumstick tree powder. Then, she carried out a lot of testing by collaborating with the Coast Water Services Board. She found that the new version worked just as well as the chlorine unit did.
When she was in the IB program at the Academy, she had the opportunity to take her unit to the Golden Climate International Environment Project Olympiad. That’s where she carried out even more research and testing to modify and improve the system. Her project ended up advancing to the national round, then the international round, where she won gold in its category.
It was at this point that she decided to patent the product. She applied before starting at NYU and received the patent while she was a first-year student.
Why Matone De Chiwit?
What sets Matone De Chiwit apart from competitors is that the device is both chlorine-free and cost-effective. Since it’s made up of natural resources common in rural Kenya and other parts of Africa, they can be replaced easily, which means users don’t have to rely on Matone De Chiwit to replenish the filter. Charcoal is easily found and other ingredients, like the drumstick tree powder, can be grown in their backyards. Additionally, Moringa olifeira grows in a variety of climates and doesn’t need much water to grow.
In terms of cost, it’s much cheaper in the long-term than what is currently used. Even so, Bhagani intends to ensure it’s affordable for rural villages by applying for sponsorship and grant funding from large companies all over Europe and North America. Her venture is also bridging the gap from the city to the village, because she is working with people from each of those communities and bringing them together to achieve clean water and sanitation for all.
The Future
With the seed grants that Bhagani recently received, including the Reynolds grant, she plans to carry out her first beta testing. The biggest challenge for her at the moment is having an adequate source of funding to collect data.
“It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation because we need more evidence of this product working in practicality in communities so that we can apply for more grants to sustain us, but without the grants it’s difficult to go out into the communities to actually grow these projects with that seed money,” said Bhagani.
With the little funding that she currently has received, she plans to establish the purifiers in at least two or three communities. Bhagani will continue checking on the units to get enough data so she can apply for larger grants and potentially work with philanthropies like the Gates Foundation. She also hopes to conduct more research on its effectiveness through beta testing in communities.
“In five years’ time, I hope to have conducted at least ten beta tests in Mombasa, and have expanded the venture all across Kenya. My intention is to begin applying for larger grants by that time so that we can expand to other countries around the world,” said Bhagani.
Additionally, she plans to collaborate with other Aga Khan academies in Hyderabad, India and Maputo, Mozambique. That collaboration could build on student organizations that can work with the rural communities that they already engage with.
Her long-term plan is to create a sustainable community, which not only bridges the urban/rural divide but also allows families to provide for themselves.
This spotlight is republished courtesy of AKF USA.
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