Joel Baraka is a 2022 TED Fellow, Queen’s Young Leaders Award recipient and the Co-Founder of My Home Stars, a social enterprise with a mission of making quality education accessible to underprivileged children in Uganda.  From the challenges of Uganda’s Kyangwali Refugee Camp, where he was raised after fleeing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joel emerged as a visionary social entrepreneur and an education activist on a mission to transform education for refugee children through the power of play.

With a Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he blends technical expertise with passion and a deep commitment to educational equity, reimagining learning as a source of hope and healing.Since founding My Home Stars in 2018, Joel has led a dynamic team of youth entrepreneurs and educators to create game-based tools rooted in Uganda’s curriculum, with an aim of supporting educators to reimagine classroom spaces as vibrant hubs of academic excellence, growth and discovery for young children.

Building on some of the ideas shared in his powerful TED Talk delivered in 2022: The Board Game Getting Kids Excited About School, Joel will share bold insights for reimagining education through play-based pedagogies, inspiring educators and activists to champion human flourishing through harnessing the power of play.