The Right to Knowledge: A Learning-Systems Approach for the Sustainable Development Goals

This empirically researched and grounded book presents a learning-systems approach for mass-scalable educational content ultimately intended for use across any language, literacy level, culture, or digital divide. The work here is based primarily on Purdue University's Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO) initiative. Addressing the crosscutting issues of resilience, genders, socioeconomic status, geographic isolation, age, and other important development parameters, it provides one answer to how we (as a global development community) should address these issues to meet the SDGs globally and the good life for people and communities locally. At its core, this is a matter of making timely information available (whether by deliberate searching, word-of-mouth/"viral" redistribution, or even "stumbling" across the information, with or without personalized user-targeting)—in other words, by reproducing how the Internet already socially "works" (while avoiding how it doesn’t work) to deliver information in a deliberate, reliable, and measurable way for outcomes, and especially for overcoming "wicked" development problems, attain or surpass the SDGs on-schedule, and open people’s access to the good life where they live. 

Julia Bello-Bravo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communications at Purdue University (Ph.D. from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA). Her research focuses on educational pathways supporting value chains for food production, consumption, and prevention of postharvest losses. She has worked on cropping systems in Africa for the past decade, specifically around the challenges and opportunities for deployment of IPM strategies within the West African context. She is the co-founder and co-director of SAWBO. 

Anne Namatsi Lutomia is an interdisciplinary Senior Research Associate in the department of Entomology at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, USA). She holds a doctorate in Human Resource Development with a minor in gender and women studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current research interests encompass scientific international collaboration, gender, leadership, adult learning and learning technologies. She has authored or co-authored several peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and a book "Gender, Digitalization, and Resilience in International Development: Failing Forward."

John William Medendorp holds a Ph.D. in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education with a specialization in international development from Michigan State University. He currently serves as Associate Director of the Urban Center at Purdue University, Department of Entomology. He has also served as Director of the Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development (BHEARD) program, as well as Deputy Director for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Legume Systems Research, and Co-PI for the SAWBO-RAPID Scaling Program. In his various roles, he has managed and supported 14 capacity development projects for USAID and USDA in over 40 countries.

Barry Robert Pittendrigh is the John V. Osmun Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University (Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA). He was previously an MSU Foundations Professor at Michigan State University, the C.W. Kerns, C.L. Metcalf and W.P. Flint Endowed Chair in Insect Toxicology (2008–2016) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was an Assistant and Associate Professor at Purdue University from 2000–2008. He was also the Director of the Feed the Future Legume Systems Research Innovations Lab (2017-2025).  He is the co-founder and co-director of SAWBO.