Jennifer Ogole, the founder and CEO of BANG Edutainment, was awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work on national and international strategic development projects targeting disadvantaged and marginalized communities. The award for her services to young people placed Ogole, who divides her time between Ocho Rios in Jamaica and Brent in the United Kingdom, on the 2022 UK New Year’s Honors List.
Ogole is hoping that her work for the past three years on the BANG development projects will lead to new independent charities and social enterprises, such as VITAL, the international Rastafarian Support Platform. Ogole said she is also working to create the Rastafarian Support Network, Jamaica, the UK, and worldwide, which is expected to launch in 2022. The network is designed to connect members of the Rastafarian community to support each other and to encourage social cohesion between the Rasta community and the general society.
Jennifer Ogole, who describes herself as a social entrepreneur, emigrated to the UK as an asylum seeker and refugee in 1980. When she was 15, she became involved with a youth group, started BANG Edutainment in her home when she was 25 and is now the CEO of the BANG Group, a firm that combines media, education, and community development. She attended St Mary’s CE School, graduated in sociology from Thames Valley University in 2003, and received an MA in Urban Regeneration at the University of Westminster in 2012. Her Life FM radio broadcast received a five-year FM license in 1997. It is now known as Bang Radio and is the first “social radio,” providing a place for people and organizations to share information and grow their North West London community. Ogole is head of a team that has seen more than 800 volunteers try their hand at media broadcasting since its inception in 2002.
Ogole’s BANG enterprise is based in Brent and addresses the issue of youth’s social exclusion via training, development, and broadcasting. It chiefly trains young people in music and media and how to use a medium to express themselves on its radio station BANG 103.6 FM.
Photo – Jennifer Ogole/BANG Edutainment
