Integrating Love to Build Trusting Communities with Wainright Acquoi

“We’re creating a space where young people feel like they have power and potential to actually solve problems.” 

Some of the most important skills we need to be successful in today’s world go beyond the hard skills that schools have traditionally taught. Skills like collaboration, interpersonal relationships, and even love (yes, love) are all required if we are to reimagine a new kind of world, one where people and planet are centered. For Wainright Acquoi, those missing pieces were the inspiration for TRIBE, an organization that reimagines high school education through entrepreneurship and workforce development.

His own experiences as a student factor greatly into his work to change the way young people in Liberia and beyond understand their place in the world, and acquire the tools and resources they'll need to succeed. And, as he aims to build connections between the reality of real-world problems and what's taught in schools, he's focused on how community, love, and encouragement can be a driving force for change.

In what was a difficult year for Wainright, he learned to rely on his Acumen network. And those meaningful conversations have kept him going. 

“I feel treated as a human, with dignity,” he says. 

Watch our conversation, recorded in September 2022 as part of Acumen’s Imagine Dignity event, here.  

Learn more about TRIBE here.