Yale World Fellows bring global lessons to New Haven classrooms

Akim Daouda stands before a classroom of sixth graders at the Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS), a New Haven public school. 

He informs the students that he is from Gabon, a small country in Central Africa. He asks if any of them know of it. Nobody raises their hand. 

Daouda, a former CEO of Gabon’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, shares a few facts about his country: Two million people live there. Forest covers 88% of its land. It is located within the Congo Basin, the Earth’s second-largest rainforest.   

“Why is it important for students in Connecticut to care about the Congo Basin?” he asks. 

A student says it’s important because the Congo Basin contains a lot of biodiversity, and its trees remove carbon dioxide from the air. 

“Bravo!” Daouda says. “Do you want to come work with me when you finish school?”

Daouda is the founder and CEO of Mwaana Inc., a venture studio that supports efforts to conserve and restore the Congo Basin, a 500-million-acre region threatened by deforestation, poaching, and natural-resource extraction. He is also a member of the 2025 class of Yale World Fellows, a program operated by the International Leadership Center at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Each fall, the program brings innovative individuals from across the globe to campus to share their knowledge, build their networks, and broaden their horizons.

Typically, world fellows give talks and lectures, mentor Yale students, and pursue independent projects during their four-month residencies. In recent years, they have begun visiting New Haven public schools to share their perspectives and expertise with local students. 

Three other world fellows joined Daouda on the recent visit to ESUMS, a middle and high school that boasts a curriculum focused on science and engineering: Amna Baig, a Pakistani police superintendent who combats gender-based violence in her country; Mathias Wikström, a Swedish entrepreneur whose company, Doconomy, provides climate-conscious financial services; and Wei Xing, a Chinese journalist who founded China Fact Check, the first independent fact-checking program in China. 

Also this semester, World Fellow Vivian López Núñez, a Paraguayan judge and women’s rights advocate, visited New Haven Academy, a public high school, to speak with students in a Latin American studies class. Additionally, several world fellows have participated in Hemispheres, a free program offered by the Yale International Relations Association in which undergraduates teach weekly lessons on international relations to local high school students. 

‘To be a woman’

Jacob Crutchfield, a social studies teacher at New Haven Academy, has invited world fellows to speak to his Latin American studies classes for the past three years. 

“The world fellows’ visits give my students a more personal connection to someone else’s story and experience of living somewhere else,” Crutchfield said. “There’s something about having a conversation with someone that leaves a bigger impression with students than just showing video clips or assigning readings.”

López Núñez began her classroom visit by describing Paraguay, a landlocked country of 6 million people wedged between Brazil and Argentina that gained independence from Spain in 1811 and became a democracy in 1989. 

She told the students of how her mother, Antonia López Núñez, was a lawmaker who championed a law that granted legal equality to women in Paraguay, where previously they needed permission from their husbands to get a job, a driver’s license, and perform other essential functions of adult life.

She told the students about going to law school and her decision to become judge as her classmates set forth on more lucrative career paths. “To be a judge allowed me to have this little power to make a difference,” she said. “It’s very little. But you can change lives. You can change your community.”

For example, López Núñez described her difficult but successful effort to convert the Paraguayan legal system from paper to digital records. “Paper was susceptible to theft, flood, and fires,” she said. “Now people can check their case files from their phones. Perhaps that seems normal for you here in the U.S., but for us it was a huge change.”

A student asked López Núñez to describe the biggest obstacle she faced during her judicial career. 

“To be a woman,” she said. “My main obstacle was to be a woman. You have to do everything twice to get recognition.”

Another asked what lessons she’s learned as a judge.

“That prejudice is the worst enemy of justice,” she said. “Prejudice forces us to think about other people before they speak. If you act out of prejudice as a judge, you will never be a good judge.”

Protecting the planet

Back at ESUMS, Daouda described the threats facing the Congo Basin. He told students that poachers wiped out 80% of the basin’s elephants in a decade to procure the animals’ ivory tusks.

“The problem in the current system is that we value what we extract. We value what we kill. We don’t value what we preserve,” he said.

He told them that 600,000 hectares of forest are destroyed annually.  

“That is six times the size of New York City,” he said. “Close your eyes. Imagine a place six times the size of New York covered with trees. Then you come back a year later and there are no more trees.

“If we continue like this, within the next 20 to 30 years, the Congo Basin will disappear.”

And he described how the loss of the Congo Basin would irreparably harm the 75 million people who live within it, likely forcing them to migrate elsewhere, which would bring about conflict and suffering.   

“The good news is that more and more people, governments, and companies are becoming aware of preserving those ecosystems,” he said.

He asked the students what they will do to protect the planet. Hands were raised. The children committed to recycle, compost, eschew plastic, and stop wasting food. 

“I really hope that you will keep your commitments and raise awareness,” Daouda said. “You don’t need to be an adult. You are the generation that will save the planet, and we’re really counting on you.”