Action Blog: Coalition

Global Campaign for Education-US spoke with college students at the 2018 UNICEF USA Summit!

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?

At the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York, world leaders gathered to meet and discuss many pressing topics. Thanks to your advocacy, global education was front and center. Here are highlights from the 72nd UN General Assembly:

The READ Act has now been signed into law. This is a huge step forward to ensure quality education for all.

Please thank your Members of Congress for passing the READ Act!

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.

Learning the sciences enhances a student’s success and has a powerful impact in particular on girls.  Africa Schoolhouse recently raised funds to assist communities in Tanzania to add three new science laboratories and sanitary composting latrines in secondary schools.

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.

The theme of this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign was ‘make education safe for all.’ Over the course of the 16 days, Women Thrive Alliance shared the work – campaigns, capacity building techniques, and achievements – of our Alliance members that work relentlessly on gender-based violence that restricts girls from getting an education. Unfortunately, in many instances, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and rape were the common culprits preventing a girl from continuing her education. In the case of Afghanistan, however, a girl’s mere chance of being allowed any education at all was the baseline.

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. 

My father-in-law squinted. “Why on earth would you want to do that?” he said when I told him I was going to a remote part of Zambia to produce a virtual reality experience for Impact Network, the NGO I work for in New York.

Impact Network runs education programs in rural, off-the-grid communities in Africa. I explained that virtual reality, or VR, would allow us to tell our story in the most immersive way possible. Short of bringing people to Zambia, the experience would transport them to a rural village where they could explore the sights and sounds of a new environment. This would help people to better understand the context and purpose of Impact Network’s work and maybe even want to visit themselves.