Meto

The Meto team is thrilled to join forces with the IC3 Movement for the 2023 Annual IC3 Conference & Expo. We firmly believe that career and college counseling holds immense significance in guiding students toward discovering their true purpose in life. Our support aims to enhance the IC3 Movement's mission of making career counseling accessible in every school.

We invite you to join us in this meaningful dialogue and contribute to this cause.

Register here: www.ic3movement.com/annual-ic3-conference-expo

Meto is proud to collaborate with some of Africa’s top universities. We firmly believe that students do not need to leave the continent to access top-tier higher education, and so it is our privilege to connect our students with top options on the continent.

In light of this, we plan to begin highlighting a different African university each month, with the goal of raising awareness about the incredible educational options that exist on the continent.

Our first African University of the Month is the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), a world-class medical school in Butaro, Rwanda. Founded by Partners in Health, UGHE combines superb classroom instruction with opportunities for hands-on learning in the field. Meto is honored to have helped connect 13 of UGHE’s current second-year cohort with UGHE. We had the pleasure of visiting with these students on campus in January, and we were blown away by the quality of the facilities and overall campus environment.

Last fall, Meto was honored as an Early-Stage Disruptive Venture at the Masters of Scale summit in San Francisco, hosted by Reid Hoffman and featuring speakers such as Bill Gates, Tyra Banks, Arianna Huffington, Prince Harry, and many more.

In some ways, it felt odd to see Meto alongside so many business giants. At our core, we will always be a mission-driven organization which cares deeply about every individual student in our network. In other words, we will never lose sight of the importance of the small-scale impact we can make in even one student's life.

But at the same time, Masters of Scale was an excellent fit for where we are; we also want to dream big! We have much to learn from the successful mega-scalers who spoke at the conference, and we hope to emulate their business acumen wherever we can, while also never losing sight of the impact we hope to create.

One key takeaway from the conference was the need for excellent tech. Next month, we plan to release our new tech product for students, high schools, and universities. We hope and expect this product to vastly improve the user experience for all of our stakeholders, which will lead to more and better connections between students and universities than ever before in our history. Exciting times ahead!

Meto is thrilled to welcome Benoit Iradukunda to our staff team as our Rwanda Coordinator! Benoit is brilliant, creative, and committed to uplifting young people across Africa. In this role, Benoit will visit schools and universities, meet with key stakeholders, and ensure our operations in Rwanda are running as smoothly as possible. Excitingly, Benoit actually found his university (African Leadership University) through a connection from Meto. We are delighted to see the process come full circle with Benoit joining our team five years later!

Last month, the entire Meto team went to Rwanda to meet with some of the students, high schools, and universities we work with in order to learn how we can serve them better. These stakeholders offered brilliant insights into how we can improve our service, especially for the rural, low-income students who face the biggest hurdles accessing higher education. We also met up with our new staff member Benoit Iradukunda (more to come on him soon!), had a team retreat on the serene shores of Lake Muhazi, and may have spotted an elephant or two in Akagera National Park. We hope to return soon!

Students, are you interested in studying in the Netherlands? Meto is sponsoring an online info session led by 5 top Dutch universities. The session is tomorrow November 10 at 19:00 CET (9 pm EAT). Register here: https://uu.webex.com/uu/j.php?RGID=re92f17754ece8aa0280169f7e94f5991

Meto's Director of Innovation Abraham Barry and Director of African Operations Hayat Muhammed Seid have been in Nairobi, Kenya this week for the HALI Access Network's annual Indaba conference. Universities and non-profit organizations such as Meto have been meeting to discuss ways to support high-achieving, low-income (HALI) students in Africa in their pursuit of higher education.

At Meto, access to higher education is not the ultimate goal; we aim to improve lives.

One of the best ways for you to join this effort is to mentor a student through the application process this year.

This is simpler than it sounds, and it could change someone's life forever (as well as their entire family). If you’re interested, please complete this short interest form.

Mētō Mentorship Initial Interest Form - Mentors Thank you for considering becoming a Mētō mentor! Please take a few minutes to fill out this form and if you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected]. If you want to read up more on what the process entails, check out: Mētō Mentorship Program - The Process_Becoming a Ment...

At last week's International ACAC Conference in Albuquerque, NM, our very own Abraham Barry presented as part of a panel on innovation in education access. He did a fabulous job, especially considering he was jet lagged from 6,000+ miles of travel from Liberia to New Mexico!

When tragedy hit Alex's family, he began to dream of becoming a doctor serving the poor in his community. We are honored to have played a part in making his dream come true. This is the story of Alex, a young man from Uganda whom we connected with University of Global Health Equity, a world-class medical school in Rwanda which offered Alex a full scholarship.

Student Spotlight: Alex Ainebyona Previously destined to spend his life weaving sweaters, Alex Ainebyona will now become a doctor serving the poor in his community.

We are incredibly pleased to announce the hiring of another new staff member: Abraham Barry, who will serve as Meto’s Director of Innovation. Born and raised in Liberia, Abraham graduated with honors from University of Liberia and went on to work for several years at SMART Liberia, a fellow HALI Access organization. Abraham is passionate, creative, and absolutely brilliant. We are thrilled to have him!

Happy Africa Day to the many Meto stakeholders on the African continent, from students and high schools to universities and Meto staff members, advisors, and board members on the continent!