New York City, N.Y. (EEI)–The Haile-Manas Academy will be a world-class co-educational secondary boarding school for 400 students of promise recruited from across the country and admitted without regard to their financial circumstances.
Currently under construction in Debre Berhan (some 120 kilometers north east of Addis Ababa) by a New York-based organization called Ethiopia Education Initiatives (EEI), the Haile-Manas Academy is expected to open its doors to its first class of 9th graders in September 2020.
Through depth of inquiry, hands-on problem solving, and the sustained shared experiences that a residential setting allows, the Haile-Manas Academy will build resilient, independent thinkers, purposeful, community-minded individuals and engaged, enterprising young citizens.
EEI expects the Academy’s graduates to have significant impact on their communities – whether those communities are local, national or global. The Haile-Manas Academy will have a major impact on secondary education in Ethiopia.
The Haile-Manas Academy will model innovative, student-centered approaches to teaching and learning. EFI’s approach to education will stand in contrast to more traditional “chalk and talk” teaching methods that focus on the rote memorization of material, ultimately limiting opportunities for students to develop the skills and enterprising mindset needed to thrive in the 21st century and to engage in active citizenship and leadership.
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EEI is designing a program that will be self-reflective and data driven, so that we can systematically share the school’s results with others. The organization has already established strong connections to local, regional and national educational and governmental institutions whose representatives will be frequent visitors to the Academy, and we will continue to nurture and expand such relationships.
The Academy will be a dynamic educational community and EEi has got big plans to leverage every possible asset and opportunity to advance education in Ethiopia.
The Haile-Manas Academy is named after author and philanthropist Rebecca Haile and her husband Jean Manas, who together launched the EEI to invest in the education of children in Ethiopia, the country that Rebecca Haile left as a child. Back in 2017, Rebecca and Jean Manas engaged Boston-based architectural planning and design firm Flansburgh Architects to develop a campus master plan for the EEI’s new school. The successfully completed Master Plan then became the basis on which renowned Ethiopian architect Fasil Giorghis designed the new buildings that will one day house the Haile-Manas Academy.
Source: EEI and flansburgh.com