At its last meeting, on 3 September 2020, RTE’s Executive Board appointed three new trustees who bring additional expertise on fundraising and human resources:
Dina Hashem, Associate Director for Global Partnerships at Habitat for Humanity International
Bharti Patel, Child Rights and Social Justice Advocate
Nikki Skipper, Director of Fundraising at The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust
They will serve for a period of three years.
Others RTE’s trustees are:
David Archer (Chair), Head of Public Services at ActionAid
Iain Byrne, Head of the Refugee and Migrants rights team and Deputy Programme Director (ag.) in the Global Issues Programme (GIP) at Amnesty International
Ayan Hassan (Treasurer), Program Finance Manager at War Child UK
Elin Martinez, Researcher at Human Rights Watch
Anjela Taneja, Campaign Lead Inequality/Lead for the Public Services at Oxfam India
For more information about each of them, see below their short biographies.
David Archer (Chair), Head of Public Services at ActionAid
David Archer is Head of Public Services at ActionAid which supports human rights based approaches to development across 45 countries. He coordinates work across the ActionAid federation on civic participation, tax and fiscal justice and gender responsive public services.
In the 1980s David worked on literacy programmes across Latin America inspired by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (publishing "Literacy and Power: the Latin American Battleground” Earthscan 1990). In the 1990s he developed the Reflect approach to adult learning, co-authoring “The Reflect Mother Manual” (1996) (see www.reflectionaction.org) an approach which has won 5 United Nations International Literacy Prizes over the past decade.
Since 1998 David has worked on rights-based approaches to education and the building of civil society coalitions on education across Africa, Asia and Latin America. He is a co-founder and long term board member of the Global Campaign for Education and has been an elected representative for civil society on the board of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) for many years, now chairing the GPE Board’s Strategy and Impact Committee.
David worked with the founder of the Right to Education project, Katarina Tomasevski – the first UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education and agreed to host the project, working with Amnesty International and GCE when Katarina passed away. As Chair of the RTE Board David helped navigate RTE into being a fully independent organisation
Iain Byrne, Head of the Refugee and Migrants rights team and Deputy Programme Director (ag.) in the Global Issues Programme (GIP) at Amnesty International
Iain Byrne is an international human rights lawyer with over 25 years of experience of working in the field including litigating before a range of international and regional human rights courts and bodies. He has been with the International Secretariat of Amnesty International for nearly nine years carrying out various roles including five and half years as a manager of various teams. He is currently Head of the Refugee and Migrants rights team and Deputy Programme Director (ag.) in the Global Issues Programme (GIP). Since November 2011 he has been a Researcher and Law and Policy Advisor in the Economic and Social Justice (previously Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR)) team conducting and advising on various pieces of ESCR research, most notably segregated education and housing of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe and the state of education in South Africa. Amnesty International’s Roma work was recognised in 2016 when it was awarded the Council of Europe’s European Civil Rights Prize of the Sinti and Roma. He is a Special Advisor on Strategic Litigation and member of Amnesty International’s Litigation Committee. He has been Head of the ESCR team (2013-2017) and GIP DPD (ag.) and Director of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity Programme (ag.) in the Law and Policy Directorate. In all three management roles he has managed a range of research outputs including for major Global Campaigns.
From September 2001 until November 2011 he held various positions at INTERIGHTS, the international centre for the legal protection of human rights, including Legal Practice Director (ag.) and Senior Lawyer playing a key role in developing the organisation’s work on economic and social rights including litigation and capacity building. Since 2000 he has been a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex.
He has sat on numerous NGO boards and advisory groups. He is currently a trustee of the Right to Education Initiative and International Justice Resource Centre and also served as the latter’s founding Chair from 2009 until January 2018. He has previously been involved in the governance of a number of civil society networks including the Steering Committee of the Privatization of Education and Human Rights Consortium; the Executive Committee of the Euro-Med Human Rights Network, participating in the first international mission to Israel and the Occupied Territories during the second intifada and the Consortium for Street Children’s executive board as well as member of Open Society Foundation’s public health programme technical advisory committee.
Dina Hashem (new), Associate Director for Global Partnerships at Habitat for Humanity International
Dina Hashem works as Associate Director for Global Partnerships at Habitat for Humanity International responsible for leveraging complex funding primarily through foundations and institutional partnerships for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region to meet global fiscal revenue, impact and scale goals.
Ms. Hashem has an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS, University of London. She also undertook a Communicative Arabic Diploma at SOAS to enrich and develop her formal Arabic skills. Ms. Hashem’s professional career in the international humanitarian and development sector spans more than 17 years. She has successfully developed strategic partnerships including consortium and institutional grants capacity for Finn Church Aid, Overseas Development Institute and Plan International from policy influencing initiatives for humanitarian policymakers to rights based approaches including right to quality education, peace and livelihoods. Dina was deployed to Jordan for two years to provide surge direction and active support to secure the potential of larger, stronger and more fundable programmes for the region including Syria refugee response and development programming in Palestine from education in emergencies to peacebuilding initiatives. Her expertise is in designing, developing, embedding the tools and processes to diversify partnerships with institutional donors to strengthen scalable quality programming across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Ayan Hassan (Treasurer), Program Finance Manager at War Child UK
Ayan works as Programme Finance Manager at War Child UK supporting international finance team in all areas of financial management. Prior to joining War Child, she worked with European Council on Foreign relations, MuslimAid and ActionAid in different capacities mainly providing strategic financial leadership, guidance and technical support as well as ensuring compliance with global standards, systems and processes as well as donors’ rules on financial management. She also worked with United Nations World Food Programme and United Nation World Health Organisation Somalia programmes for several years. Ayan is qualified accountant (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountant) and holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of East London.
Elin Martínez, Researcher at Human Rights Watch
Elin Martínez is a Senior Researcher in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. At Human Rights Watch, Elin works on the right to education. She conducts research, national and global advocacy, and advises Human Rights Watch staff on legal and policy issues, including on the right to inclusive primary and secondary education, school-related sexual violence, and discrimination and exclusion faced by girls, children with disabilities, refugee children, and minorities. Elin previously worked for the Global Partnership for Education’s Secretariat, as well as Save the Children UK, where she led the organization’s global advocacy efforts on the right to education in humanitarian emergencies. Prior to focusing on global education advocacy, she worked with grassroots human rights defenders and advocacy organizations in the Asia Pacific region to increase accountability for human rights violations through UN and national human rights bodies. She holds an LL.B. in International, European and Comparative Law from the University of Sheffield, and an LL.M. in International Criminal Justice and Armed Conflict from the University of Nottingham. Elin has been a trustee of theRight to Education Initiative since 2017. She is a member of the Global Working Group to End School-related Gender-based Violence.
Bharti Patel (new), Child Rights and Social Justice Advocate
An accomplished and dedicated Human Rights and Social Justice campaigner, Bharti’s work focuses on a child rights to quality education and to be free from abuse and exploitation in all its forms, and advocating for fair and just social, economic, and environment justice policies and practices. She has worked in the UK and in India leading high-profile research, campaigning and advocacy organisations overseeing important changes to law and policy on child protection, trafficking prevention and transnational child abuse and exploitation including child labour. In the UK Bharti was instrumental in lobbying for Britain’s first-ever national minimum wage legislation. In India she directed sustainable development programs to help strengthen food, water, and livelihood security for vulnerable communities. Bharti sits on the advisory board of Freedom United fighting to end modern slavery.
Nikki Skipper (new), Director of Fundraising at The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust
Nikki has over 20 years’ experience of fundraising in international development and environmental organisations. She has worked in leadership roles at Right To Play (RTP) UK, WWF, Sightsavers and WaterAid, developing transformative partnerships with individuals, corporates and foundations. RTP is an education charity, recognised for its tried and tested approach to empowering children and young people through sport and play. As National Director Nikki worked closely with Trustees on regulation, policy and governance requirements, as well as leading the communications and fundraising strategies. She currently leads fundraising at the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, supporting young people who are taking social action in their communities, including in the areas of education and human rights. Nikki was a school Governor for 5 years at a London community school.
Nikki is an Institute of Fundraising Mentor and believes passionately in supporting and empowering young people to make a difference. She has a B.A.(Hons) in German, Politics and Philosophy and a B.Sc.(Hons) in Environmental Science.
Anjela Taneja, Campaign Lead Inequality/Lead for the Public Services at Oxfam India
Anjela Taneja is an education specialist with 20 years of experience with specialization in education governance. She is currently the Campaign Lead Inequality/Lead for the Public Services work of Oxfam India. She has been the Head of Policy for the Global Campaign for Education. Prior to this, she worked for ActionAid and Oxfam and was the Oxfam International southern education lead. She is also one of the founding members of the Right to Education Forum, India's largest education network. She has a comprehensive experience of global, regional, national, and local education advocacy, programming, and monitoring and evaluation. She has written numbers of papers and reports, including Time to Get it Right: Lessons from EFA and the MDGs for Education 2016-2030, Private Profit, Public Loss: why the push for low-fee private schools is throwing quality education off track and Federalism and Fidelity: A Review of the provisions under the Model and State Rules under The RTE Act 2009. She represented GCE in several advocacy spaces including UNESCO’s Teacher Task Force for Education 2030 Steering Committee and the INEE Advocacy Working Group and has worked globally with full range of non-state education actors and relevant UN and interagency bodies active on education. She actively took part in the negotiations for the shaping of the SDG agenda, was part of the selection committee for the SDG summit, was selected to take part in the IAEG meetings on behalf of the education CSO community and wrote a briefing guiding education civil society participation in the Voluntary National Reviews for the SDGs.