ELI Africa

ELI Africa was founded in the United States in 2009 by Vedant Seeam, a Mauritian student at Yale University.
The organization established one of its two branches in Mauritius in 2010, the other branch being in Tanzania.

Our aim is to maintain a sustainable environment for the future generations to enjoy and to bridge the achievement gap between children coming from poor families and those coming from wealthier ones by ensuring that children who come from poor families get access to a full-fledged education of quality. We are involved in various environmental initiatives and animal welfare projects.

We have successfully transplanted over 5,000 coral fragments as part of a coral farming project in Trou aux Biches, planted over 15,000 mangroves across the island, planted over 1000 endemic plants in our endemic forest at Plaine des Roches and rescued and rehomed over 100 stray dogs. Our educational programs are currently running at Residence Kennedy where at the time of writing we have 40 registered students and at Bambous with 35 students.

In 2009, a needs assessment report was carried out to identify loopholes of the Mauritian education system. Based on this, ELI Africa developed three main programs. The first one, named ELI Fellows program, brings Yale undergraduates every year to Mauritius to teach during their summer break. The program was successfully carried out in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Despite the tremendous success of the Fellows program, Eli Africa recognized that basing its efforts on a two-month stint every year was not a sustainable way of addressing education deficits in Mauritius.

The ELI Corps program was therefore developed. The ELI Corps program basically gives qualified Mauritian high school and university students the opportunity to volunteer and teach children of different age groups.

The programs offered are free and take place in ELI Africa's education center. In 2011, ELI Africa established a center in Mont Gout where the ELI Fellows and ELI Corps program were run. The program was also run in two centers found in Roche Bois and Pamplemousses.

Since 2011, ELI Africa has been reinvigorating ELI Corps program at its centers with the implementation of classes. In 2015, ELI Africa implemented the ELI Code program with the view to bridge the technological gap between students, a Visual Arts program to promote creativity among its students, the Maytiv Positive Psychology program to encourage the children to believe in their capacity to dream big to achieve big and a Trash to Treasure Class to promote sustainability among the students.

Since February 2016 the ELI Corps program is run at ELI Africa's educational and recreational center found at Residence Kennedy.