October Newsletter: Education Advocates Speak Out
October 12, 2010
At the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit, recently held in New York, education advocates from around the world gathered to highlight the importance of access to quality universal education.
During the MDG Summit, the Global Campaign for Education hosted an event with Queen Rania of Jordan, former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others, which focused on our 1GOAL campaign – an international campaign that partnered with the 2010 FIFA World Cup to increase awareness about the tens of millions of children globally denied access to a quality education.
At that event, 1GOAL Ambassador Nthabiseng Tshabalala, a 12-year old student who traveled all the way from Johannesburg, South Africa, shared her story of why education matters to her, and her friends back home – many of whom don’t get go to school, and many of whom enroll, but do not finish. Nthabiseng called on world leaders to live up to their promise of MDG 2 – Achieving Universal Education – and reminded the packed room that, “I am here because I am educated. You are here because you are educated. It is time to do your part and make sure all children have the chance to get a good education.”
Right you are, Nthabiseng, right you are.
As part of advocacy efforts around the MDG Summit, we called on you to sign a petition to President Obama calling on him to make education a priority in his MDG Plan. We are proud to announce that more than 7,000 of you joined that call!!
While the MDG Summit has ended, our work has only just begun. At the Summit, the president did not lay out a clear way forward to achieve MDG 2. Nor did he include education in his Global Development Strategy, also released during the Summit. This is unacceptable. We cannot accept it and the millions of children denied access to quality education cannot afford it.
During the Summit, Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, and a member of the GCE-US leadership council, authored a powerful op-ed in the Huffington Post calling on world leaders not to lose sight of quality universal education. You can still speak out about MDG 2 and the importance of achieving quality universal education by clicking here and posting a comment to Dr. Zeitz’s op-ed.
Thank you for all that you do and keep speaking out!
