Education for All is Possible so society can change the world

Issued for Global Campaign for Education: 23 July 2009

Whilst 1 in 3 people in Europe and North America get a university education, the multitudes number of people doesn’t go to school in Africa. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) is now reviving its efforts to achieve the goal for Education for All by engaging its partners within the campaign on the plight of Global Illiteracy which will be held on United Nations International Literacy Day, September 8, 2009.

Since its formation in 1999, the Global Campaign for Education has mobilized more than 13 million people from various organisations including civil society groups and unions to pace on-going pressure to world governments and financing institutions to make Education for All a reality.

Poor governments around the globe have promised to put the plans in place and rich countries controlling financial institutions promised to help where finances were needed to ensure that the goals for Education for All is Possible by 2015.

Despite huge gains in universal primary education, many children are yet to benefit from a secondary education, while adults literacy rates have also remained with 776 million adults including women lacking basic reading and writing skills.

The GCE call upon its education coalitions partners in over 120 countries to participate in the campaign to debate on education, lobby ministers and mobilize multitude of people around the world and in each city and country to campaign on Education for All is Possible by 2015.

It is in these reasons that the campaign calls major donors to commit aid to public education. The campaign extends its call to achieve the following objectives:

• Improve early childhood care
• Ensure all children, girls, children in difficult circumstance and ethnic have access to primary education
• Ensure that young people and adults receive access to learning and life-skills programmes
• Achieve a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015
• Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2015 and achieve gender equality in education by 2015
• Improve quality of education and ensure measurable outcomes are achieved by all.

Since the annual Action Week on education campaign started, the Global Campaign for Education has helped ensure an extra 40 million children are in school.

Like what Nelson 'Madiba' Mandela would urge "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world". Join the GCE’s campaign on the plight of Global Illiteracy, click here.