Community Development is one of the areas of work Right 2 Smile is involved in. One principle by which we work is social justice. Social justice, grounded in empowerment and human rights, ensures every individual, particularly young people like ours, access to educational and supportive spaces. Social justice is a principle for the need to build fairer, more equitable societies.

In 2011, Right 2 Smile joined forces with the Olasiti Community to tackle the educational barriers faced by young children in the area.At the heart of the idea was a group of 19 students, mostly girls who were not attending school due to the distance they had to walk and the fear of wild animals early in the morning. Therefore, the mission, although it seemed ambitious at that time, was to establish a school—a project that would not only require infrastructural resources but also active community participation and stakeholder engagement to ensure the long-term sustainability of the school.

Our motivation to initiate this partnership with the Olasiti community stemmed from witnessing the injustice of young children being denied education. The feeling of knowing that if we work together with the community to give access to the children in this community to education, we can achieve our goal of bringing social justice. This was the main motivation behind setting up Right 2 Smile.

For the years that followed, young people and the community became our main areas of work and activism. Kenya, India, Cambodia & the youth programs in Malta are all projects initiated with local communities to fight social injustice young people face. For us, social justice entails creating projects that foster educational and personal growth for young people, ensuring equal opportunities for all children.Our goals are to create safe educational, recreational, and supportive programs for young people.

Right to Smile’s approach to community-based projects is to make the involvement of the same communities central to the project. Communities are rich in resources, and the community in Kenya, and the community of R2S which is made mostly of volunteers had plenty of resources to contribute.By uniting the strengths of volunteers, beneficiaries, and like-minded supporters, we established a grassroots movement, empowering the communities we collaborate with.

Community development for R2S is not just about ticking boxes or achieving predetermined goals—it’s about creating genuine partnerships and sustaining long-term relationships with partners based on mutual respect and shared objectives. That’s why Right 2 Smile adopts a holistic, long-term approach to community development—one that goes beyond offering volunteer placements or fundraising. R2S is also actively working hand in hand with our partners in project planning and implementation to acquire shareable skills through capacity-building and knowledge exchange.

Each project we undertake is a unique journey, guided by the specific needs and aspirations of the communities involved. Whether it’s setting up schools in India and Kenya supporting community-driven initiatives in Ghana and Cambodia, or youth services in Malta, our approach remains consistent: to work collaboratively with local partners and stakeholders to identify, prioritize, and address their most pressing challenges with the involvement of the community.

Of course, this collaborative approach has its challenges. Navigating the complexities of intercultural communication, managing differing expectations, and reconciling disparate reporting and accounting systems are all part of the journey.Yet, it’s through these challenges that we’ve learned and grown as an organization, always open to learning and improving our understanding of what it truly means to work collaboratively.

Over the years, we have achieved important goals not by working alone, but with the active involvement of the carers, parents, volunteers, and communities who did not see themselves as passive beneficiaries but as active participants and agents of social justice through the platform offered by Right 2 Smile. Our partner communities have contributed with local knowledge, fundraising, lobbying local leaders, whilst fully collaborating to achieve our goals.

Right 2 Smile today is every volunteer who contributed to the organization and the people supporting us throughout our journey.A community can achieve its collective goals not through a top-down approach, but through the collective contribution and participation of everyone involved.As we initiated our recent project in Ghana, we look forward to continuing working with different communities for the well-being of our future generation. With your support, we can continue to work towards social justice for young people.


Damjan Attard