Right for Education
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| Founder | Dr Susann Dattenberg-Doyle, Queen of Gbi Kpoeta |
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| Website | www |
Right for Education[1] is Africa’s largest independent online destination of timeless, relevant content that informs, inspires and empowers. Right for Education publishes information for free in English and French to an audience of over 6.1 Million people in 45 African countries on subjects ranging from human rights, governance and health to African culture, financial literacy and sustainability. Right for Education is part of The NGORYISI Foundation.
Right for Education[2] works with experts in their field to curate free, relevant, and engaging content for adults across Sub-Saharan Africa, covering topics from business and women’s rights, to health and the environment. The organisation has no political or religious ties and encourages free thinking and debate between its members.
History
Right for Education was established in 2014 by Dr. Susann Dattenberg-Doyle, a psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. She first became involved in work in Ghana in 1999, and in 2004 she opened new school buildings in Kpoeta in the Upper Volta region, which now teaches over 1000 pupils. In 2006 she was formally elected Mama Ngoryisi Dziwornu I, Queen of Gbi Kpoeta.
From her work in Ghana, Dr. Dattenberg-Doyle found that despite the increase in the creation of schools in the region, a major hurdle to overcome was a lack of accessibility to educational resources. As a result, she decided to establish Right for Education, with the ambition to provide education to adults directly.
Through the help of volunteer authors, she began to collect a library of publications that ranged from basic information about health care to human rights and business. When she discovered the difficulty of publishing and supplying books directly to schools, the books were instead placed online, allowing families and communities to access information directly via the internet and social media, and implement the ideas into their lives.
From 2012, Dattenberg-Doyle's work under "I Do Philanthropy" was granted NGO status from the government of Ghana, which led to the founding of Right for Education (R:Ed) and the website in 2014. The website currently contains all of the materials produced by Right for Education and is the main access point of the majority of users. As of November 2019, they have over 6.6 million users on Facebook.
Mission statement
Right for Education encourages life-long learning and independent thought.
Organisation
Right for Education is part of The NGORYISI Foundation, which creates positive social impact in Africa. The foundation believes that with the right information in the right context, individuals have the power to transform their own lives.
Right for Education social impact is making engaging information accessible to as many people as possible across Africa, encouraging lifelong learning and independence of thought amongst their audience. They use social media and their low-bandwidth online library to reach as many people as possible, using the smallest amount of data possible so their articles can be accessible to all. All articles are written by experts in their fields, including scientists, medical doctors, anthropologists, and engineers who have knowledge to share, and topics range from why it is important to have clean water to concerns about women's rights.
Right for Education believe in independence of thought and therefore present each article as a discussion, never dictating opinions but instead remaining factually accurate, culturally sensitive, and culturally neutral in opinion. Each article offers a fresh viewpoint and Right for Education encourages critical thinking and self-direction, wishing each community their own identity and cultural aspirations.
Women's Rights
One of the most important themes within the organisation is that of equal rights for women, be it at home, at school, or in the work-place. Gender equality is proven to help with the eradication of poverty and therefore Right for Education has a significant focus on promoting and protecting women's rights. In the future, Right for Education is determined to see women grow in confidence and skills, therefore making a positive impact on society, and helping communities to escape poverty.
Methodology
Right for Education focuses on a range of topics: from health, law and business to culture and the environment, as well as providing stories for children to practice their reading. Amongst others, the topics Right for Education focuses on are:
- Health and Medicine: Right for Education is determined to help eradicate preventable diseases and infections. Whilst the work of vaccines and inoculations is key in preventing these illnesses, education on clean water, viruses, and bacteria can have a dramatic effect on reducing the rate of infections within communities and households through preventative measures.
- Home and Family: Home and Family content directly targets women, families and the elderly with vital information pertaining to home maintenance, safety and hygiene. It also covers topics relating to family planning, contraception and child rearing.
- Human Rights: Right for Education's Human Rights category is amongst its most popular and thought provoking. The platform prides itself on creating content that will allow people to reexamine their views on human right, with a particular focus on women's rights.
- Law and Governance: By providing information on the role of law in society, and more specifically the importance of fair governance, Right for Education hopes to explain key theories of law and governance, specifically discussing the place of democracy in Africa today and the needed fight against corruption.
- Business: The importance of sustainable industry is key to Right for Education's goals as an NGO. By providing guides and ideas, Right for Education hopes to encourage its members to start legitimate, successful businesses, helping the individual and the community as a whole.
- Culture: Cultural identity is an important theme to Right for Education’s work, and one of Dr. Dattenberg-Doyle’s passions. Right for Education believes in building confidence, and by gaining an insight into a people’s culture and history, it can encourage its members to be proud of their society and their achievements.
- Science and Tech: Right for Education provides a broad education on all things Science and Technology. They hope that their readers will find new developments in these fields engaging and aspirational.
- Environment: Global warming is not just a western problem. Sustainable agriculture and respect of the environment is relevant all over the world. By providing information on responsible farming methods, as well as on a variety of other topics, Right for Education hopes to reduce crop failures, and to end preventable famine and hunger.
- Insight: Insight is R:Ed's most recent category. It gives influential people living and working in Africa today a platform through which to communicate with R:Ed's vast pan-African audience. R:Ed hopes these articles will be aspirational, promote good causes and give its readers great, newsworthy insights into the future of Africa. R:Ed encourages the subjects on the Insight category to be crowd sourced.
Achievements on Social Media
Right for Education has swiftly become one of the most followed pages on Facebook in Africa. Its followership represents significant proportions of the population on social media in many of the African countries it is present in. One of R:Ed's central aims is to reach a greater population to share its ideology: that everyone has the right to access education.
Contributors
Right for Education believes that the most effective form of charitable giving is knowledge rather than money. All their contributors are largely made up of volunteers who have high degree of experience in the field they are writing about. They recruit solely from top UK and international universities and select goal orientated, highly motivated and efficient people. All articles are reviewed and presented in the context of Africa, and contributors undergo thorough training on matters of phrasing, wording and cultural content. All Right for Education contributors remain part of the Right for Education community in the form of the Right for Education Alumni Group on Linkedin.[3]
References
- ^ "| Education is the only equaliser". www.rightforeducation.org. Retrieved 2015-11-27.
- ^ Right for Education
- ^ "Sign Up - LinkedIn". Retrieved 24 September 2016.