Onja’s vision is to provide brilliant young minds in the world’s poorest countries with access to education and real career opportunities.
In Madagascar, higher education is a privilege reserved for the 5% of people who can afford it. As a result, the majority of the most brilliant minds are limited to low-paying, unfulfilling careers.
We assess the very brightest students who can’t afford high school or university and select those who show motivation and computer programming aptitude.
Students receive two years of English and Computer programming instruction at our live-in training centre in Mahanoro, Madagascar.
Graduates begin exciting work developing software with overseas teams. They continue to advance their skills and earn a life-changing salary to support themselves, and their families. 100% of profits made are used to train the next wave of talented students.
With the enterprise up and running, we’ll be able to grow our student base without further donations – the work completed by graduates will fund further students.
The idea for Onja came about in 2011 when Kiwi entrepreneur Sam Lucas was working as an English teacher in Cambodia, two of his students came into difficult times. Well aware of the need for skilled coders worldwide, Sam successfully taught them coding with the help of several volunteers. Sam realised that this could be a game-changer.
He moved to Madagascar where he founded Onja in late 2015. He lived in rural village, where he learnt to speak Malagasy, how to live with very little, and even the traditional Betsimisaraka way of farming rice, before setting up the live-in training centre in a small beach town in Eastern Madagascar.
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