Sitting at London’ Borough’s Market, just near the London Bridge, thinking of today’s elections in South Africa. May 7 marks an historic occasion for the “freeborns,” those born after the end of apartheid in 1994, those who will be voting for the first time. I am recalling something one of them told me as I was working with our GlobalGirls in the streets, interviewing young people about the upcoming elections. “Not yet Uhuru…not yet free…” he said, “But I am free in the sense that I have my own mind, and can choose to vote or not to vote.”
It is Global Action Week—a week used to highlight all that is being done for the right to education and what is being done to protect that right to education around the world. It is also a great time to jump in and get involved. Jump in to help the 57 million children out of school, jump in to help the 1 in the 3 girls that will be married before the age of 18 in the developing world instead of in school and most pressing jump in for the schoolgirls of Nigeria who need a world community to stand with them, their families and their community.
Finally. The world is watching. The horror of what is unfolding at this very moment for 276 schoolgirls still in captivity in northeast Nigeria led the nightly news for the first time. It was a big story on every channel on Monday and hundreds of thousands of tweets made it a trending topic.
It is spring in D.C. which means sunny days and cherry blossoms. It also means GCE-US Youth Training Advocacy season which always gets me super excited about the power of youth and the great things they are doing around the nation and the world. Our advocates just spent Monday on the Hill talking about education for all with their Members of Congress and we will be sharing their experiences over the next few months.
When the Roatan Bookmobile parks along the seashore at Flowers Bay, a throng of students gather excitedly at the entrance of Thomas McField School in Honduras. Painted with a mural of kids reading and colorful seaside scenes, the bus is a rolling advertisement for the joy of books and the power of education.
The Week of the Young Child™ is an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) to focus public attention on the learning opportunities for young children, their families, and the professionals and educators who serve them.
57 million children around the world denied an education despite the world's promise to put every child in school by 2015. Tens of millions of children drop out of school before learning how to read and write - forced into early marriages, participating in dangerous work just to feed their families, or pushed out because of school fees they can’t afford. Access to education is one of the best ways to decrease poverty.
I know, I know. The email gurus say NEVER, NO not EVER do you send an email on Friday. People are taking long weekends. People are checked out from work. They won’t read it, so don’t do it. But I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait the ENTIRE weekend without telling you the exciting news at GCE-US.
Library For All was founded because 250 million children across the developing world are not achieving the basics of literacy and numeracy, even after 4 years at school. We are a NYC-based non-profit [Go read logo] organization that exists to unlock knowledge to the developing world by providing access to a cloud-based digital library. Our mission is to increase educational opportunity for students in developing countries, giving them an opportunity to learn, dream and aspire to lift themselves out of poverty.
It's 2014, and we're still living in a world in which 1 out of every 10 children can't go to school. In many places, those in school are provided a quality of education so low that they leave without fundamental skills in literacy and numeracy. UNESCO estimates that nearly 40 percent of the world's children of primary school age either do not reach grade 4 or, if they do, fail to attain even minimum learning standards.