Volunteering Laid the Foundation for me — Motunrayo Fatoke, Education Activist.
Motunrayo Fatoke, a graduate of the University of Ibadan has spent the past 4 years of her life tackling education inequality and increasing equal access to education for underprivileged and disadvantaged children in Nigeria.
She currently serves as the Senior Programmes Assistant for The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre in the education investment unit where she liaises and engages with private sector actors in investing in education through their identified CSR programs leveraging best practices in education.
In September 2022, She was invited to the United Nations HeadQuarters in New York, to participate in the 2022 transforming education summit. There, she was part of the team that designed and launched the Global Youth Declaration. She also had the opportunity to discuss with Gordon Brown — the former British Prime Minister- the launch of the international financing facility for education (IFFEd) with a commitment of 3 billion pounds from several global organizations to education for low-income and conflict-affected countries.
On this episode of The Impact Spotlight, Motunrayo shares her journey as a UNICEF influencer, an education professional, and a Global Youth Ambassador for Their World.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you discover your passion for education and increasing access to it?
“It all began when I volunteered for different nonprofit organizations early in my University days. That was how I entered the social impact and education development space. I joined the Enactus team of the University of Ibadan, where I got the opportunity to lead a project called the ‘LearnAgain’ initiative, which focused on reducing the alarming rate of out-of-school children in Oyo State. Through the project, we were able to pick up and enroll about 50 out-of-school children in schools and we empowered most of their mothers with capital to start up business ventures to support their children through school.”
How do you support education in Nigeria today?
“As a Senior Programmes Assistant for The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre, my work revolves around supporting organizations with research, design, implementation, and evaluation of educational projects and initiatives across the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
I serve as a consultant for various local and international organizations, in designing and implementing evidence-based education programs in rural communities to improve children’s learning outcomes.
As a member of the Global Shapers community, I recently led a book drive in Abuja and donated over 1,500 books to schools in remote communities that greatly lack learning materials especially textbooks to aid learning.
Lastly, I volunteer for various organizations as a young activist and education champion, most notably, the UNESCO SDG4YOUTH Network where I serve as a focal point for the education policy working group.”
Tell us more about your work experiences in the education development space so far:
“Leading the Learn-again Enactus UI project was a great learning opportunity for me as I and my team got to impact various children and families in underprivileged communities. I basically “carried the project on my head”, making sacrifices like sometimes missing classes and tests in school to organize the preparatory classes for the children before reintegrating them back into school. Fortunately, it all paid off as we won grants and raised over a million Naira for the project.
Right before I finished school in 2020, I got a job with AREAi — Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative, a nonprofit with a mission to close the gaps between education, empowerment, and skill development for poor and vulnerable children and youth. At AREAi I served as the Director of operations. During that period I supported its program activities and co-led its “FastTrack” project, an accelerated learning intervention program aimed at scaling up the foundational literacy and numeracy skills of children in IDP camps leveraging technology and Teaching at the right level ( TaRL) methodology.
Around the same time, I joined AREAi, I became a Global Ambassador for Their World, a global children’s charity committed to ending the global education crisis and unleashing the potential of the next generation.
In the last 2 years, as a Global youth ambassador of TheirWorld, I led the conversation at the 2021 Global Education Summit, and I served as a moderator at the Kenya Ed-tech side events. I also led the education commission takeover for international youths day, to showcase the work of youths in education to a global network and I created content that received over 15,000 impressions. I also co-championed the global #LetMeLearn Campaign and I was featured on Sarah Brown’s podcast (The Former President and now Chair of Theirworld and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education)
Can you recount moments that have stuck with you to date?
For me, it’d be the emotional moments I had during the Learn Again project. Some moments were heartbreaking like when we lost 2 children one drowned, the other had sickle cell anemia.
Other moments were fulfilling, like when Farouk, a child who had been out of school for 5 years, went on to be the first in his class after we had put him back in school. We also helped a boy named Samad who wanted to be a soldier, so we enrolled him in an Army command school and he’s well on his way to making that dream a reality. These moments made all the work and sacrifices worthwhile”
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