Eduspots

Our partner Charity, we support Eduspots work in Ghana building community-led libraries (or ‘spots’) and supplying them with books and other educational resources. This Charity was set up by former Brighton College teachers, and Brighton College continues to be one of their biggest partners.

Aims

Background

In December 2014, Cat Davison, HMM of Seldon House travelled to a school in Tamale with just two suitcases of books donated by the girls in Seldon House at Brighton College. Afterwards, reflecting on the impact of these books with good friend and Avis driver, Francis Yeboah, on a trip up Mount Afadjato, they decided to initially focus on providing learning resources that were accessible to entire communities in remote areas of Ghana. This was a mission which Francis Yeboah had been committed to for years, having grown up in a remote Ghanaian community, Ekawso.

The first ‘spot’ was created in Abofour (see below), with the enormous support of the Abofour volunteer team. Cat and Francis met Dennis, the Head Boy of the Messiah School, who spoke of his desire to having reading books to learn independently. After using the ‘spot’ in Junior and Senior High School, Dennis later returned to the project as a teacher and an adult volunteer, before starting his own initiative at university.

Back at Brighton College, fellow Housemaster Paul Wilson quickly got on board, and together with the extraordinary support of so many at Brighton College and community leaders in Ghana, they set up the aims of the project. The first six UK pupil ambassadors – Oliver Champness, Ella Dobson, Seth Follen, Ali Hudsepth, Thomas Linsdell and Ed Warren, who travelled out to Ghana in December 2015, played a central role in inspiring the school community to engage in the initiative.

The ‘spots’ are all run by community members in Ghana, with committed volunteer teams opening the ‘spots’ and running activities. UK and Ghanaian pupils have also taken a central role in establishing the aims of the charity, writing the newsletters, informing the strategy, designing logos, producing educational resources, leading resource collections and creating logos.

Resources

Regular Book Drives, fundraising, and an international trip for Eduspots Ambassadors.

Impact

Eduspots now have a Ghanaian and UK team of 5 (2 full-time, 3 part-time) working on the project, as well as an estimated 300-400 volunteers across the UK and Ghana.

Eduspots has initiated or supported 40 projects across Ghana, supported by a volunteer network of over 300. 10 are powered by solar. The volunteers meet for an annual conference and regularly communicate via Whatsapp. We estimate that 10,000 individuals use the ‘spots’ each year, which are often the only free and inclusive education spaces in their districts.

Brighton College has shipped roughly 80,000 books to Ghana over 4 years

Brighton College pupils have been the highest performing pupils in the online course in international development for three years.

We won the Tes ‘International Award’ in 2018 for the best UK international education project for our work at Brighton College as ‘Reading Spots’. This award is sponsored by the British Council. We were shortlisted for the award in 2017.

Eduspots came in the top 5% in the Young Social Entrepreneurs Award 2019 and were shortlisted for the Cambridge Social Ventures Programme.

Pupil Involvement

8 L6th ambassadors take part in the trip, alongside 3 staff. All pupil are involved in fundraising and donating books.

Frequency

Ongoing.