WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
This growth happens inside real programs. See how the National Debate League, Dreamers Academy and the rest actually work. Our Programs Your support is what turns this growth into the next ten years of it.
Where to go from here
This growth happens inside real programs. See how the National Debate League, Dreamers Academy and the rest actually work. Our Programs Your support is what turns this growth into the next ten years of it.
WHAT DEBATE GIVES YOUR CHILD
Your child doesn’t just learn to debate. They get access to coaching most Rwandan secondary students never see.
Every round is scored by a trained judge, who tells a student exactly what worked and what didn’t. This is real feedback most students don’t get anywhere else in their schooling. Debate students can also reach a layer most families don’t know exists: public speaking masterclasses from visiting experts, including Dr. Michael Hester of the University of West Georgia, and Education USA, a dedicated track that helps older students prepare for the SAT, write application essays, and apply to universities in Rwanda and abroad.
The actual work: training coaches, building tools, and reaching new schools.
A donation funds three things in practice: training and certifying the coaches and judges who run every tournament; building and maintaining the digital tools: iDebate Hub, iRank that let the organization run at a national scale without a national-sized staff; and reaching the next school, the next province, the next student. Looking further ahead, gifts are also what will fund the next stage of the 2026–2030 plan: a formal scholarship and mentorship pathway for alumni, so debate doesn’t stop paying off the day a student graduates.
The actual work: training coaches, building tools, and reaching new schools.
A donation funds three things in practice: training and certifying the coaches and judges who run every tournament; building and maintaining the digital tools: iDebate Hub, iRank that let the organization run at a national scale without a national-sized staff; and reaching the next school, the next province, the next student. Looking further ahead, gifts are also what will fund the next stage of the 2026–2030 plan: a formal scholarship and mentorship pathway for alumni, so debate doesn’t stop paying off the day a student graduates.
No one leads a debate session without being trained and certified first.
More than 120 coaches and judges go through standardized training before they’re allowed to run a tournament, and every one must certify through iDebate’s own e-learning platform before they do. The strongest 30 schools get something further: Pro-Debate Academy, advanced coaching in economics and philosophy for teams ready to compete at a higher level. iDebate has been running this way since 2012, and today works with 204 schools across the country. This isn’t a new program asking to be taken on faith, it’s one hundreds of schools have already tested.
