Swanta Blessing Bonat

Swanta is the Founder and Executive Director of Community Outreach for Educational Change. Popularly known as Tr. Swanta, she is an educator with special interests in children development. She loves children and has been dedicated to the cause of ensuring that children acquire quality education, particularly children from rural areas. Prior to Community Outreach for Educational Change, Swanta worked as a Hostel Administrator at Africa International College, Abuja.

Armed with a B A in Education (CRS), a Masters degree in Christian Education and certified with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, she has a vast experience working at all levels of education and school systems. Her career started as a Class Assistant after which she rose through the ranks of being a Class Teacher, House Mistress, Hostel Administrator, School Administrator and now a School Manager. She has also undergone series of trainings and workshops which have given her the license to dare the odds in the profession.

In her journey to contribute to the education sector in Nigeria and in her approach to be the change she sought to see, she resigned her job and left the city of Abuja to pursue active educational evangelism – taking basic education to underserved and unreached communities. She founded Community Outreach for Educational Change- COEC in 2016 to enable her accomplish the singular goal of reaching more children with quality education regardless of their ethnicity, religion, location, social status, political affiliation or age.

Swanta uses her social media platforms to inspire sacrifice and educational activism amongst many of her followers through the detailed narrations of her experiences in the various schools and educational interventions she has been involved with. A journey through her Public School Experience and HeadTeacherDiaries series on Facebook will leave you drawn into the plight of the many school children in rural and disadvantaged communities. Through these narrations, many school children in rural communities have been reached. Swanta has spoken on radio, television and at events and been part of outreaches to over twenty-one typical rural communities in North-West Nigeria to create awareness of the importance of education. In recognition of her contributions as a teacher and especially as a school leader who worries about the welfare of her staff and students Swanta has earned features in more than 10 online magazines, blogs, and pages of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter by various organizations and individuals with several awards like the FBI Award for Influence through Professionalism, 2020, the AKS Education Awards India for Global Teacher Award, 2020, the FBI Award for Influence through Education/Social Good, 2019, the ZI Prize Award for Education and Activism, 2019 and the NBTT Recognition Award of the Year 2017 in Honor of Continuous Contribution & Support towards Literacy and Language Development. In 2023, she received the Inspirational Educator Award as the 2023 Inspirational Leader of the Year from Meadow Hall Foundation for the work she does with schools and children in hard to reach communities.

Swanta is currently the Principal of the oldest and biggest EMS Children’s School located in Jos and also serves on the board of Thinking Cap Literacy Initiative another NGO whose main goal is to roll back illiteracy among Nigerian children and teenagers using various creative methods.