Action Blog: Women

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. 

Quality education is the UN’s fourth sustainable development goal. Gender equity is its fifth. Though they are categorized separately, these goals are deeply intertwined. Indeed, women and girls worldwide have significantly less access to education than their male counterparts – so disproportionately that some 66% of the world’s 774 million illiterate population are women. This staggering statistic acutely underlines the global necessity of education for women. So, in honor of International Women’s Day, let’s take a look at five ways that education can improve the lives of all women and girls worldwide.

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.

On Wednesday, January 9th, the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act (WEEE Act) was successfully signed into law. The bipartisan legislation was led in the House of Representatives by former Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), and sponsored in the Senate by John Boozman (R-AR) and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD).

After two flights and 20 hours in the air, leaders from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The immediate sight of palm trees and the sensation of a post-sandstorm breeze made it clear that we were a long way from home. But once we met our Saudi counterparts, it was evident that we were among fellow trailblazers in early childhood education who shared our dedication to the young children we serve. 

Education enables girls to fulfill their potential to transform their lives, families, and communities. Educated girls have better employment opportunities, marry later, and go on to have fewer, healthier children. Likewise, increasing girls’ access to education contributes to improved health, development, and economic growth.

GCE-US holds a Youth Advocacy Summit which gives youth advocates a platform to speak to their representatives to advocate for global education on Capitol Hill. The summit includes a training day with panelists from various coalition members within the Global Campaign for Education and a day of scheduled congressional meetings where the Youth Advocates can directly speak to their representatives about why access to quality education around the world matters to them. Read about my experience here. 

Learn about essential points and strategies proposed by leaders in global education such as Yasmine Sherif - director of Education Cannot Wait, UN High Commissioner Matthew Reynolds, and Meighan Stone - Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy Program within the Council on Foreign Relations. Yasmine Sherif, Meighan Stone, and Matthew Reynolds speak to the escalating issue of providing quality education for children, especially girls, in crisis settings. 

Education is a basic human right and often a way out of poverty. Thus, governmental policies and other agencies emphasize access to free or low-cost education. While providing free education is a worthy goal, access alone is not sufficient. What happens when students are too poor to take advantage of it? Can anyone be really too poor to afford “free” education? If such a scenario exists, what does it mean to provide holistic educations for a community? To change the conversation from seemingly distant “future value of education” to immediate “what I will get today,” or more importantly, “why should I go to school today?” We in the Rukmini Foundation realized that we need to think differently and come up with innovative solutions. Through this post, we will summarize our key efforts that shed lights on these vexing questions, which are common to all underdeveloped nations in the world.