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.
Girl Rising, the 5th anniversary film at the heart of Girl Rising’s campaign for girls’ education and empowerment, features nine girls who have confronted challenges in going to and staying in school. While these girls exhibit extraordinary courage, strength, and perseverance, they are also thoroughly ordinary – representing some of the millions of girls around the world struggling to go to and stay in school.
"Traveling to Nepal (or any developing country for that matter) can often be seen in a series of pictures or images that we can look back on and learn from. On my recent return trip to Nepal to review work done by Edge of Seven I also had a series of images that were important in telling a story of the importance of girls’ education in fighting poverty." edgeofseven.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/nepal-snapshots-of-hope-from-march-2018/
The #MeToo movement, which took the world by storm last year gave women a platform to discuss the abuse or injustices that they have experienced in their lives. For many young women and girls it has been an opportunity to speak out and demand change. But which voices are still silent and who do we still need to listen to?
