Changemaker Spotlight: Kahon ng Karunungan ✨
A brief interview with founder, Razel Suansing
Welcome to createHER Collective’s “Changemaker Spotlight” series, highlighting nonprofits, organizations and activists who are working on creative initiatives to empower their community and advocate for change.
Razel Suansing is addressing educational inequity one “kahon” at a time with her nonprofit organization, Kahon ng Karunungan.
Meet the Founder: Razel Suansing
Razel Suansing is, first and foremost, a proud Filipina. She finds family in all three of the major islands (Nueva Ecija, Ilo-Ilo, Sultan Kudarat) and believes this enriches her distinct identity.
“My culture brought me up to be resilient, joyful, and collaborative in the face of any challenge,” says Razel. “Like the looms of Yakan village in Zamboanga, my culture weaves a personal tapestry from fabrics, enriched by an assortment of diverse, unanticipated challenges that bring color to my life and pursuit to enlightenment.”
Her proudest feat to date is co-founding Kahon ng Karunungan (combatting educational inequity) and founding Literato Ph (using literature to combat authoritarianism). Beyond educational inequity, her greatest passion is conflict resolution as she comes from an area that is riddled with religious conflict in Philippines and wishes to do her part to resolve these conflicts in various parts of the globe. For this reason, she is a prospective “Ethics, Politics, and Economic” and “Ethnicity, Race, and Migration” double major at Yale University. In her free time, she lives an immense social studies and literature nerd. She loves watching history documentaries (13th is her favorite!), analyzing movies and literature for meaning (Truman Show? Parasite?), participating in Academic Bowl, and listening to podcasts (Radiolab! PhilosophizeThis!). She also loves writing prose and participating in service experiences as means of learning more about her culture and getting a more profound worldview.
What is Kahon ng Karunungan?
Kahon ng Karunungan (KnK, Est. 2018) is a non-profit organization that aims to reduce educational inequity in the Philippines and around the world. Initially, this was done by distributing self-learning kits to disadvantaged schools, such as those which have faced infrastructural damages or are underfunded by the Filipino government. The aim of our “kahons” is to facilitate continued education outside of the classroom. The organization is youth-led, with most of its members being 18 and under. Over the past two years, KnK has distributed over 1500 self-learning kits to schools damaged by typhoons and volcanic eruptions.
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This year, KnK is focusing on improving our workbooks to include all four core subjects (English, Social Science, Science, Math), establishing a blog that sheds light on the causes of educational inequity, and using technology to make educational resources available to the remote areas of the world. KnK belongs to the KNOW movement, a network of youth-led NGOs that combat educational inequity, and currently has over 10 partner NGOs from all parts of the world including the United States, Nigeria, Canada, and Ghana.
What inspired you to create your organization?
Kahon ng Karunungan broadly focuses on reducing educational inequity all over the world. Personally, I experienced first hand the gap between the quality of education in Filipino schools and the elite international schools in the Philippines. While we were reading Shakespeare, Darwin, the world’s greatest thinkers, most in Filipino public schools could not even understand the basic tenets of English grammar. I believed that the educational opportunities that I was so fortunate to have was circumstantial and economically-based. Thus, I believe it was my duty, given my education, to reduce the gap between the quality of education in the Philippines. What initially gave us the inspiration to start was a typhoon that ravaged the province of Kalinga in the Philippines. We realized that the most vulnerable schools were the infrastructurally damaged schools and that we could provide these classroom in a box kits to fill the gap between the time of catastrophe and their formal schooling.
In your own words, what does it mean to be a changemaker?
A changemaker is one is not contented with the way they see the world, but does not what until the prime age of their lives to propel themselves to action. Each changemaker does not need to create significant change right away. Slow, enduring change comes one step at a time. Our greatest changemakers are the ones creating consistent differences in their own communities and are not fixated on their recognition they get for the change they make.
How can people join your organization?
Currently, applications are closed for KnK, but I would like to encourage any educational equity organization to join the KNOW movement!
Are you currently hosting any initiatives or campaigns people can get involved with?
Yes! We would like to bring emphasis to the KNOW movement.
In May of 2020, we launched KNOW (Knowledge Worldwide), a network of youth-led NGOs from all parts of the world, whose mission is to combat educational inequity. Our objectives are as follows:
1. Share stories of educational inequity all over the world by reposting pieces from our respective publications
2. Share our resources with one another (workbooks, apps, etc.), so we may achieve our objectives more easily (tutoring, outreach trips, etc.)
3. Collaborate on projects that can help all of us (ex. College Pathways focuses on scholarship information sessions. We will be hosting one in the Philippines too, and you can also hold information sessions about scholarships in your own community).
By combining our resources, we can help more international communities while creating greater change in our own communities. Though we have the same mission, our differing approaches will help us tackle this issue more comprehensively. If you are part of an organization that tackles educational inequity, we would love to have you on our network!
Interested in being spotlighted? Want to nominate someone who should be spotlighted? Send us an email at createher.collective@gmail.com and fill out this form!
We are excited to work with ALL types of nonprofits, activists, advocates, empowerment organizations and any individual taking action to spark positive change in their community.
