CIYOTA
CIYOTA
Broader Sectors
- Health - Afya/Health
- Education - Sani/Wisdom
Demographic Focus
- Children
- Refugees and Displaced Populations
- Youth
Cohort: 03
- East Africa
- Uganda
COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA) is a volunteer-based organization established by youth in the Kyangwali refugee settlement in Uganda. The Organization empowers young people living in Uganda and across Africa to become entrepreneurial leaders that contribute to solving the root causes of their community problems through quality education, community building, and peace-building programs.
Why Their Work Matters
Uganda hosts the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, with over 1.2 million people fleeing ongoing conflicts in South Sudan, DRC, and Burundi. 86% of refugee secondary school students and 25% of primary school children in Uganda remain out of school. Over 2000 conflict-affected children have been educated through CIYOTA’s primary school education program, 1000 high school students have accessed quality education through scholarships, and 62 university students have been matched to university scholarship programs.
Partner Impact
Leadership Highlight
Ntakamaze Niyonvira
Ntakamaze was born in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country that has lost over 6 million people in two decades of war. Along with thousands of other Congolese, he was forced to flee to Uganda and lived as a refugee for over 23 years.
In 2005, Ntakamaze and his friends started to build foundations of what is today known as COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA), a youth-led initiative, formed to provide high quality and innovative education to empower conflict-affected children with the necessary skills to address complex community challenges. In 2013 and 2014, he conducted research on the “Impact of Refugees Economic Activities in Relation to the Private Sector in the Host Countries” for the Humanitarian Innovation Project at the University of Oxford. In May 2017, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester in New York. Upon graduation, he worked at DENSO Manufacturing Tennessee for one year and currently serves as the Executive Director for CIYOTA.
