Our Story
In 2015, our founder joined a small community church where she volunteered to teach the kids at Sunday School every Sunday. Through visitations and her interactions with their families and other volunteer teachers, she learned that some of them lived in shacks and their parents could barely afford 3-square meals, let alone pay the cost of their kids’ education.
She was moved to pay fees for some of the kids and initiated a grant scheme, which she funded, to give interest-free loans to a few selected mothers to operate their own businesses on a small scale. She also started weekly mentorship sessions with the youth in the community to provide guidance for pursuing their educational goals and led them to raise funds to donate to the less privileged. Since then, she has been inspired to raise funds to support youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, specifically those with special education needs and those at orphanages, to help them pursue their educational goals and ultimately become economically independent.
Our Founder
Lucy Appiah
Lucy Appiah has nine years of experience managing programs in the international development space. She has managed programs worth millions of dollars to deliver solutions to improve the lives of over 3000 young women and rural communities. Prior to founding StepUp Ed Inc, Lucy served as Associate Director for the Yale Young African Scholars (YYAS) Program, an initiative of Yale University and a college access program for talented high school students in Africa. In this capacity, she led her team to develop programming strategies and content to support high school students in Africa, particularly those with limited access to opportunities, to accomplish their educational goals in the US and other parts of the world.
Before her relocation to the US, she worked at the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) as Senior Program Officer mainly responsible for The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, a program that provided access to high school and college for thousands of high achieving, low-income students in Ghana.
She is passionate about mentoring young Africans to make informed decisions concerning their education and career. Lucy earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Ghana and a Master of Philosophy in Social and Developmental Psychology from Cambridge University in the UK. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.