Education

Rising Daisies wants to become irrelevant. Quality education can make that happen by empowering and equipping young Africans to fight poverty, stabilize nations, and conquer disease. Conflict resolution, hunger relief, and medical assistance are all necessary, but they are short-term bandages to long-term problems. Quality education is the most effective long-term guarantee of prosperity. Quality education must take precedence to achieve sustainable progress, which is what this organization hopes to achieve.

Youth

Young people are the best agents of change because they are unmatched in their enthusiasm and passion for progress. They are the future political, business, and social leaders of the world. Investing in African youth is the best way to fully unlock the potential of African nations, just as it is across the world. Rising Daisies is currently working on providing student sponsorship and mentorship for high school students. The future vision is to expand its reach to collegiate students.

Partnerships

Development should be based on partnership, not pity. Development work needs to build on the community’s assets, knowledge, and culture in order to achieve sustainable impact. Local partners most often know community needs better than any outside entity. Rising Daisies operates on a philosophy of equal partnership, recognizing that both Rising Daisies and its partners have resources to contribute.

Furthermore, development conducted in pity, despite the best of intentions, can perpetuate the false stereotype that people in SSA lack the ability to take care of themselves. We must recognize that while, as outsiders, we can help fill some resource gaps, the communities and people we serve live full lives and are our equals; they deserve to be treated as such. We must listen first and ensure we are always committed to partnership.

The Current Situation

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 1 in 3 adolescents are not enrolled in secondary school. That means more than 20 million youth are out of school. There is a dire need to invest in secondary and post-secondary education.

We are on a mission to change this.

Poverty is a major contributing factor for low enrollment rates. When over one-third of the population is living on $2 per day,** secondary education is simply not feasible in SSA. Parents are faced with the difficult decision of providing food, shelter, and clothing, or sending their children to school.

Education is a human right and should be provided to every youth.

Significant investments to education will provide the foundation which will result in long-term growth and progress. Rising Daisies works to ensure that barriers of poverty are broken to allow access for the youth of the developing world to receive secondary education.

*-(World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa Gross enrollment ratio, secondary, both sexes)

**-(World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa Poverty and Equity Data)