What your support makes possible
“That is the Gashora difference: they don't just build students; they develop leaders and change-makers. Every girl leaves Gashora with the potential to transform not only her own life, but the lives of those around her.”
Every success story at Gashora begins with YOU- someone who believed in the power of girls’ education.
Meet Joannah Gladys Umuraza, GGAST Class of 2021. After graduating from Gashora, she earned her BA in Economics from Yale-NUS in 2025. Today, she works in healthtech, using AI and data to transform healthcare delivery across Africa.
Before I came to Gashora Girls Academy, I thought education was a race. In the schools I knew, your worth was your rank. But Gashora did something radical: they took away the ranks.
At first, it was unsettling. Without a rank, who was I?
But then, I realized that the rank system prioritized competition over depth of understanding and personal development. Without ranks, the competition becomes internal, and the focus shifts to how much you are learning, how well you can apply your knowledge, and your growth, rather than being "the best."
I became challenged not just to give a surface answer, but to dig until I found what actually mattered. That was the moment my education stopped being about a grade and started being about my country.
I remember sitting in a debate round focused on the dollarization of the global economy, and that stayed with me for a long time. I did not yet have the technical language for what I was trying to understand, but I found myself asking questions.
💡 Studying economics would give me the analytical frameworks and tools to understand global systems and to engage with them critically and constructively. I wanted to know why power sits where it does, and how I could help bring it home to Rwanda and Africa.
Joannah at the Fintech Forum while interning with the Rwandan Develoopment Board under the Chief Investment office.
Gashora gave me the autonomy to fail, too. When I moved to Singapore for college, I struggled with coding. I didn't just fail once; I struggled through two entire courses before it finally clicked.
Because Gashora had trusted me to manage my own time and lead my own projects, I didn't see failure as an end—I saw it as a data point.
Today I work in healthtech, using AI and data to solve real-world problems such as digitizing national health systems, providing the government with reliable data to inform decision-making, and improving healthcare delivery.
I don't work for a rank, I work for the fulfillment of causes beyond my own interest. I work because of a seed planted in me during my time at Gashora.
That is the Gashora difference: they don't just build students; they develop leaders and change-makers. Every girl leaves Gashora with the potential to transform not only her own life, but the lives of those around her.
🌟 Your generosity makes stories like this possible. Thank you for believing in the power of education to transform lives.
