Continuous learning is essential to realizing the potential of education but remains challenging in a protracted crisis like Somalia, where Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Returnees typically experience disrupted education due to constant flux and unpredictable evictions from their camp homes.
On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, Oxfam International and GCE-US co-hosted an event on Education as the Great Equalizer during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Civil society organizations – including JRS – have joined forces to voice their support for Education Cannot Wait as it works towards its goal of supporting quality education for close to 9 million children annually in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Washington, D.C. (January 18, 2019) – Global Campaign for Education welcomed the signing into law of the Protecting Girls’ Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act by President Trump on January 14. GCE-US, together with partners including Girl Up and JRS/USA , supported this legislation since it was introduced in 2017.
GCE-US Recognizes the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by Highlighting the USAID How-To Note on Disability Inclusive Education.
GCE-US member and disability-inclusive education advocate Dr. Tom Sabella went to the 10th session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In this blog, he notes his observations and insight from the conference.
ConTextos’s program, Soy Autor (I’m an Author), started with at-risk youth living in neighborhoods with high levels of gang activity, and then forayed into juvenile detention centers and prisons. Soy Autor challenges El Salvador’s assumptions about our youth and forces us to wrestle with multi-faceted individuals.
Especially on this day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement, it is vital to recognize that unequal access to quality education violates children’s rights and affects all of our futures. Dr. King said, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.” This is the day to rededicate ourselves to the cause of education and equality, and to do everything we can to level the playing field for children throughout the world.
Bidil Abdulahi has experienced joy and heartbreak in his attempt to send his children to school.
Every day, Bidil Abdulahi would farewell his oldest son, sent off on a one hour walk to the nearest school. “It was a long walk for a child,” he says, “but I didn’t want my child to be as illiterate as I am.”
The decision paid off, with his son Yunus now in college.
Bidil’s daughter was not as fortunate.
A few months ago I met a grandmother.
That’s not so remarkable, until I tell you that she is only 25.
No matter how you calculate the math and circumstances that result in a young lady becoming a grandmother at age 25, it is horrific. There is no instant panacea that will make instances like this history. In this particular case, I can point to a long civil war, with its attendant atrocities, as well as child marriage, poverty, and other factors as contributory, but I really started the story this way to make the point that in our drive for accurate statistics with which to make decisions, we must never lose sight of the fact that those statistics point to real people, with real stories, and with very real barriers to overcome.
