Design for access
Build local infrastructure around real constraints: connectivity, power, shared devices, and the capacity to maintain the setup.
THE LAB / WHO WE ARE
A generation of builders.
A belief in every learner.
EmpowerEd is a youth-led educational equity lab and technology incubator. We develop practical ways to make rich learning experiences accessible beyond reliable internet.
OUR MISSION
Opportunity should travel
further than infrastructure.
Where a learner lives should not decide whether they can explore a scientific idea, build something with code, or develop the confidence to ask the next question.
That belief becomes useful when it changes what we build. We focus on learning tools that run locally, resources that remain available offline, and workflows that put educators at the centre of the experience.
Our ambition is international and domestic: to help address the educational resource gaps faced by disconnected and under-connected communities, including under-resourced schools and rural settings.
WHAT THE LAB DOES
One mission.
Four disciplines.
We bring the educational experience and the technology that supports it into the same design process.
Curate for relevance
Select and prepare useful learning resources, preserve their sources, and make room for language and local context.
Create for understanding
Develop activities that invite learners to investigate, practise, reflect, and make something they can explain.
Evaluate for usefulness
Move toward community pilots with clear questions about usability, educator workflows, content fit, and learning.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE WORK
Builders with a shared reason.
EmpowerEd is youth-led and deeply collaborative. Our team makes educational access more practical, local, and human.
THE TEAM DIRECTORY
Different strengths.
A shared purpose.
Our team brings together creative, technical, research, and operational perspectives to build EmpowerEd.
Gabriel Robertson
Founder & Executive Director
Rachel Durham
Brand & Creative Lead
Kyle Higginson
Analytics Lead
Jelena Montalban-Uriostegui
Edge Content Lead
Alisanna Bianchi
Research Lead
Simone Lee
Compliance & Security Lead
Olivia Reitmann
Marketing Lead
OUR PARTNER NETWORK
Where relationships
become possibilities.
Deployment planning across 11 countries, with upcoming work in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Explore the places shaping the next chapter of EmpowerEd.
Markers show country-level areas of work. Planning and upcoming work do not indicate completed installations. Use the arrows or select a map marker to explore.
OUR PARTNERS
Good work starts
with relationships.
We’re proud to name the organizations partnering with EmpowerEd.
Sierra Leone Children’s Fund
EMPOWERED PARTNEREngage in Palestine
EMPOWERED PARTNERAumazo
EMPOWERED PARTNERWHY YOUTH LEADERSHIP MATTERS
We’re growing up in the world
we want to help change.
Young people experience the opportunities and exclusions of digital learning firsthand. EmpowerEd turns that perspective into a practice of building, questioning, and improving.
Our role is to bring energy and technical curiosity to the work, while making space for educator expertise and the knowledge communities already hold.
Our flagship
EmpowerEd Edge: a locally operated learning platform that brings resources, interactive paths, and teacher tools together.
Our current foundation
A working local software platform and a growing collection of original and attributed learning experiences.
Our next milestone
Validate the full setup on target hardware and prepare an educator-informed pilot with clear responsibilities and learning questions.
Our wider horizon
Explore compact learning infrastructure, knowledge continuity, and approaches relevant to both international and domestic educational resource gaps.
THE WORK AHEAD
A more equitable future
needs people who build it.
Help develop the tools, prepare the learning, and bring the next chapter of EmpowerEd into reach.