Fundraising & Public Engagement

Increasing the public’s understanding of issues affecting the communities we serve is an important part of our work.

In 2021, we organised a series of new digital events and activities aimed at boosting the Irish public’s engagement with what we do.

We held our first Women in Business webinar in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. More than 200 people joined the live Zoom chat to hear contributions from women in Belgium, Ireland, Kenya, Norway, Uganda and Zambia, who all spoke with experience and passion about the challenges and opportunities that existed for themselves and other women, particularly in the agri-business sector.

The pace of COVID-19 vaccination was far slower in Africa than elsewhere during 2021 and concerns were mounting about vaccine inequity globally. A miniscule percentage of Africans had been vaccinated while the world’s richest countries were amassing vast stockpiles. So, in August we asked our supporters and the wider public to lend their voices to calls for change by signing a petition. More than 1,200 people did so. We also had letters to the editors published in Ireland’s national and regional press before the petitions were sent to the relevant authorities in Ireland and the UK, as well as to the heads of the WHO and UN General Assembly.

In late 2021, we launched a free online course called Food for Thought, which explored some of the issues, challenges and solutions to global food production. Around 680 people signed up for the course, which included six presentations by Self Help Africa contributors from Ireland, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda.

A new micro-website was developed to host a digital version of Self Help Africa’s 2020 annual report. This is allowing us to share and disseminate content from our published annual report more widely than ever before. Since launching in September, 2021, the annual report has received 1,192 unique visits.

We reached a number of notable digital milestones in 2021. Our total audience of followers on social media grew to nearly 87,000 people. On LinkedIn our audience grew to more than 10,000 people, and on Instagram to over 6,000. The combined audience on social media across Self Help Africa and United Purpose channels now totals close to 100,000 people. Meanwhile, email contacts grew to over 45,000 in the same period.

Online Annual Report

Food for Thought online course

followers on social media in 2021

WorldWise Global Schools

The programme is fully funded by Irish Aid and is currently delivered by a consortium that is led by Self Help Africa, in collaboration with Concern and the City of Dublin ETB (CDETB) Curriculum Development Unit.

During 2021 specifically, WWGS has maintained a strong number and spread of post primary schools accessing quality Global Citizenship Education (GCE) through the WWGS programme. Specifically, there was a total of 458 unique schools engaged in GCE through the WorldWise Global Schools programme during 2020/21. This represents involvement by 63% of all post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland with the WorldWise Global Schools programme during the 2020/21 school year.

Schools are involved with the WWGS programme in a number of different ways. The 458 participating schools this year is comprised of 256 schools that engaged directly with the WWGS staff team through grants, the Global Passport, or teacher training. An additional 202 schools participated in the WWGS programme this year through involvement with NGOs, Education Networks and School Clusters, who are grant funded by the WWGS programme.

During 2021, WWGS sought to further promote and implement quality standards and good practise approaches to Global Citizenship Education (GCE). It has done so through the programme’s award winning Global Passport Framework, which the evaluation undertaken during 2021/22 notes has successfully become a model framework for the implementation of GCE at whole-school level. The programme has also promoted quality standards and good practise through the WWGS Self Assessment Tool (SAT), which has been referenced as a tool in the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. In addition, WWGS has this year been developing an expanding range of GCE curriculum subject guides at both Junior Cycle and Senior Cycle level.

Self Help Africa, and the current WWGS consortium members, will expect a Call for Proposals from Irish Aid for Phase III of the WorldWise Global School programme, which is expected to run from 2023 until 2028.

The WorldWise Global Schools programme had another very successful year delivering on Global Citizenship Education (GCE) for the post-primary schools sector in Ireland.