Network Ambassadors graduate in the IMPEQ Program

Network Ambassadors graduate in the IMPEQ Program

“A well-supported person can change the world”, Dr. Julia Seibert (Bread for the World) quoted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege at the symposium of the third cohort of the IMPEQ Master’s program. And Master graduate Akvira Siberi Kivatsi adds: “As IMPEQ students, we have received great support. Now we have to take action!”

Great hopes, ideas and visions are in the air on this day, July 30, 2019. 20 graduates from sub-Saharan Africa receive their certificates for the successful completion of the international Master’s program “Educational Quality in Developing Countries” (IMPEQ) at the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. Among them are the network ambassadors Ernest Nkurunziza and Meschac Karhakabire Vunanga. Together with their fellow students, they can look back on two instructive and intensive years in which they pursued their studies in addition to their professional activities and personal challenges: “Two students became mothers during this time and three of the graduates had to leave their country due to war and flee,” tells Prof. Dr. Annette Scheunpflug, founder of the program and member of the GPENreformation Council. But: “We grew together in shortest time to a real team and exchanged ourselves, helped us! And Prof. Annette Scheunpflug and her chair gave us great support with individual offers and solutions,” report the former students.

The graduates present the results of their Master’s theses in short lectures and on posters. Suggestions for the redesign of the workbooks used for 46 years (!) for English lessons in the DR Congo, ideas on how to reduce the alarmingly high 80% of pupils in Madagascar who complete primary school without basic reading skills, the loud call to finally tackle inequality and inequity between the sexes and many other research results are presented.

Now it is time for the graduates to put what they have learned into practice, to follow the visions that have been developed and to actively work towards improving the quality of education in schools in Africa – and perhaps also worldwide! – to use. GPENreformation wishes them all much strength, success and God’s rich blessing.


The international Master’s programme “Educational Quality in Developing Countries” is offered by the Chair of General Education at the University of Bamberg, conducted in Bamberg and at the Protestant University of Rwanda in Butare and sponsored by Brot für die Welt. The fourth run will start this year. Further information can be found on the website.