U.S. Leadership Needed on Global Education:
More than 90 Million Children are not in School
At the 2000 United
Nations Millennium General Assembly, the United States joined 188 other
countries in seeking to ensure all children achieve universal, primary
education by 2015 (Millennium Development Goal #2). They also sought to promote
gender equality and empower women, thereby eliminating gender disparity in
education (Goal #3). Together, these goals encompass what is commonly called
ÒEducation for All.Ó
Education
for All has significant benefits:
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Education is an essential
building block to ending hunger and poverty. To date, no single developed country has been able to pull itself out of
poverty without free, universal primary education.
á
Education, particularly of
girls, is one of the most powerful tools of development. When girls are
educated, their future income increases dramatically, they and their children live
longer and healthier lives, and malnutrition in the family declines sharply.
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Education decreases
harmful traditional practices, like early
childhood marriage and child slavery.
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Exclusion from education
disproportionately affects the most poor and vulnerable children and
tremendously worsens the situation for HIV/AIDS orphans. Without hope and opportunity,
these children are more likely to be exploited or recruited by terrorist
organizations.
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In some parts of the world,
over 50 percent of the population is under the age of 15. Education teaches
much-needed leadership skills, civic responsibility, and life skills.
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Education is one of the
most effective ways to stop the spread of AIDS and has been called a Òsocial
vaccine.Ó In Zambia, HIV infection rates
declined by half for educated women but remained the same for uneducated women.
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A significant investment in education is critical to
ensuring a stake in the future direction of global progress. Education is paramount
for freedom and democracy. It builds respect for the rule of law and support
for justice-based governing structures and leaders.
á
Education is the path to rebuilding nations
destroyed by conflict or ravaged by nature.
Children around the world have shown their willingness to attend school despite
staggering odds and in the face of overwhelming threats.
Despite the importance
of education, over 90 million
children of primary-school age are not in school. One of the biggest reasons is the continued charging of school
fees for a basic primary education. Although such fees are typically not more than
$50-$100 a year, they are insurmountable for the 3 billion living on less than
$2 per day. Not surprisingly, the majority of these children are girls; many
are orphans of conflict, poverty, disease (particularly HIV/AIDS), and famine. When
primary school fees were abolished in Kenya in 2003, more than a million
children came to school in that first week.
The world is reaching a tipping point on
Education for All. Developed nations have called on developing nations to create national
education plans for all children. As of December 2006, 26 countries had
international donor and non-governmental partner approved plans, through the
Fast Track Initiative.[1]
However, without direct investment in these plans, they will not be successful.
Direct, additional funding for scale-up must be provided so that all countries
can make bold policy changes, such as the abolition of school fees, towards
education for all children.
Last year, the United
Kingdom pledged $15 billion over the next ten years for direct investment
towards the goals of Education for All. The United States, however, has not
made a long-term predictable investment plan, which is a critical for
sustainable scale-up. We must do more.
TAKE
ACTION! Ask your Members of
Congress to Contact Key Decision Makers and Urge them to Increase Funding for
Education for All
U.S. investment in Education
for All presents a unique opportunity to create a holistic strategy that
prioritizes Education for All by greatly expanding primary school enrollment,
scaling-up resources (like textbooks and school supplies), providing teacher
training, feeding programs, and strengthening school systems to accommodate new
students and schools.
Congress in currently working on developing its budget for
2008. Appropriations Subcommittees in both the House and Senate are working out
proposed appropriations amounts for the items under their subcommittees. It
will require the support of citizens for Congress to invest what is needed. For
2006 and 2007, Basic Education programs were funded at only $465 million. To
put that in perspective, the Congressional Budget Office estimates investments
in Iraq were $80 billion in fiscal year 2006, or $200 million per day. That
makes our financial commitment to educating the worldÕs children equivalent to
what we spend in two days in just one country.
1. Send a handwritten letter to your U.S. Senators and
Representative. Urge them to write or speak personally to House Foreign
Operations Subcommittee Chair, Nita Lowey (D-NY), and to Ranking member, Frank
Wolf (R-VA), in support of including the following in their FY08 foreign aid
funding bill:
a. Scale up basic education funding to $1 billion, with at
least $200 million directly to the Fast Track Initiative to support national
education plans.
b. Include language in the final appropriations bill requiring
USAID to design and track its basic education programs to achieve specific
targets related to increasing school enrollment, retention, and basic measure
of educational attainment.
2. To get your letter there fast, send it by fax (fax numbers
for all members of Congress are available at www.house.gov or www.senate.gov). You can also send an email to
your members of Congress on this and other poverty issues by going to www.results.org
and clicking TAKE ACTION NOW. Follow up with a call to your Senators and
Representative and leave a message with the person who answers the phone OR ask
to speak to the staff person who handles foreign policy.
To learn more about Education for All or RESULTS,
go to www.results.org or contact local RESULTS activists: Julia Bolz at juliabolz@msn.com, Bob
Dickerson at resultsbob@yahoo.com, or Karen Gielen at kngielen@mindspring.com.
RESULTS was founded after
a 1976 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that we possess all
of the resources, structures and technology to end hunger in a single
generation, but that the political will to make it a priority is missing. RESULTS activists are committed to exercising their personal and
political power by lobbying elected officials for effective solutions and key
policies that affect hunger and poverty. Unlike traditional non-profits working
on these issues, RESULTS is
bi-partisan and is organized as a 501(c)(4) to enable its members to advocate
directly with election officials. A separate, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) Education
Fund serves to educate and engage the public about issues related to hunger,
poverty and powerful citizenship. More than 100 RESULTS groups are active across the U.S. and in six foreign
countries. Several groups meet in the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle,
Redmond, Tacoma, Snohomish, Vashon and Bremerton.