Two years ago, the name Tanítanék (Hungarian for ‘I wish to teach’) referred to two teachers managing a Facebook page from their apartments in Budapest. They criticized the working conditions of teachers in Hungary, and demanded that the outdated curriculum be exchanged for one that meets the needs of students in the 21st century. They were enthusiastic – but underpowered. Today, Tanítanék is an organization engaging tens of thousands of people, with hundreds of thousands of euros to spend. We have been able to organize dozens of demonstrations protesting the conditions for educators in Hungary, and set up a strike fund for teachers punished by the government for speaking out. As of 2024, Tanítanék has contacted a hundred thousand people people via email and has enough resources to pay for a staff of fifteen people and a permanent office in Budapest. All of this has paved the way for our next mission: to build a huge, nationwide grassroots network of teachers, parents, and students. 

 

I work as the Communications Director for our organization. Tanítanék fights for a better, more equal, more modern public education system in Hungary. I love my country, but we are in serious trouble under Orbán’s regime: democracy is being eroded by the day. Civil society is weak and generally doesn’t have any say in policy issues. There are thousands of progressive organizations in the field, but most of them are without real impact – or even just a strong voice.

 

There is a paradox in the world of social movements. Even though progressive organizations fight for social change, they often stick to old routines and tools when propagating their messages. And ‘old’ unfortunately does not stand for ‘well established and efficient’ here. A large number of people who manage communications for social causes still see social media posts and press releases as their main tools. If you are one of these people, I’m writing this article for you. There are tools that can upgrade your communications in practically unimaginable ways. If you don’t use them, somebody else surely will – and at this moment in history this somebody would likely be found quite far on the right side of our political spectrum.

 

The authoritarian right is on the rise globally, and it is talking to the people that we should be talking with. Many of these parties are fluent on social media such as TikTok; our far-right PM Viktor Orbán successfully posts AI-generated content that taps into popular youth culture, despite being in his sixties. Enormous amounts of money flow into right-wing influencer ads on YouTube and Meta every day. We progressives need to catch up online, but not by doing the same thing: we need to do something better. We need to use the digital world to find our way back to real people, and engage them in our struggles. However, the far-right already has the upper hand. If we don’t start using 21st century tools, they will absorb all of our target groups.

 

At its inception, Tanítanék organized many protests and benefited from overall favorable press in the opposition-leaning media in Hungary. Tanítanék had an edge because of its amazing speakers: teachers with a passion for education who were determined and fierce enough to talk about their problems and envisioned solutions with great skill and empathy. They did so for years. But that’s all we had. Without any digital infrastructure, the organization was always vulnerable to press dynamics and the unpredictability of social media algorithms.

 

In 2022, things took a favorable turn for us at Tanítanék when we faced an all-important choice: to either remain small or completely overhaul our strategy by incorporating digital tools, tools that were almost entirely unfamiliar to anyone in the organization. These included tools such as newsletters, online petitions, microdonations, and a funnel for lead generation. Despite our unfamiliarity, we decided to take a leap of faith and embrace this new online world of tools. In Hungary, teachers’ wages are so low that they often take second jobs to make ends meet. Sensing the accumulating rage within the profession in 2022, the Orbán-led government decided to address this problem by taking away the teachers’ right to strike, rather than raising wages. That was the defining moment: Tanítanék implored teachers to strike anyway. Deploying its new digital infrastructure, Tanítanék started a petition to support teachers, ending up with tens of thousands of signatures. We collected microdonations, small contributions that engaged a lot of people in funding the movement, and set up a strike fund for teachers. We started email campaigns, enabling people to send direct emails to Members of Parliament, in order to put pressure on them. We knew we could not win right away – but we were ready to hold the line.

 

Thousands of teachers have since joined the strikes, and even more supporters have signed our petitions and sent us money. We raised a total of about 600.000 euros just last year. Our staff now works full-time on new campaigns. We also use the money that we raise to fund other education-related protests and financially support other progressive organizations that need it. Using our new digital organization tools, Tanítanék is able to uphold direct and even two-way communication with our followers via a growing and curated email list, and send targeted messages based on the interests and activities of the people engaged with us in our struggle.

 

In Hungary, the digital tools that civil organizations use are still few and far between. The reasons for this probably extend to other countries too: a lot of people are afraid of new technology, they are not used to engaging thousands of people, and the fundraising culture is not well developed. We understand these concerns as had them too, but we took our leap of faith in 2022 and will never turn back. Our digital infrastructure is the main reason we have been able to multiply our income by orders of magnitude; it is the reason that we were able to engage tens of thousands of people in our struggle. And it meant that we could provide some kind of safety to protesting teachers that risked their jobs. This was our way.

 

What will yours be?