PTPI GYF 2013: Washington DC Here She Comes!

Katie's getting ready to head out for this year's PTPI Global Youth Forum leadership conference in our nation's capital. She leaves early Wednesday morning for the four-day event.

From the agenda:

Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” We believe that, through your GYF experience, you will return home having a better understanding of the importance of global education, existing barriers to education throughout the world, and strategies to make education a reality for every child, everywhere. The theme of the event is Global Education:  Providing a Vision for the Future!

I'm excited about her looking at education from a global perspective. I'm hoping she discovers how good she has it and at the same time how we are behind.Typically they have students there from other countries and I think they will bring a unique perspective - that of gratitude - for the gift of education which might open my child's eyes a bit. Last time she went, it was a life-changing event for her. I am crossing my fingers it will be similarly moving for her this time.

The prep materials are jammed packed with information and factoids. I'm posting the information here because it's so good and can be used for a reference if you ever want to dig a little into global education. Here's what she's reviewing to prepare. More tomorrow about the agenda.

The Value of Education

Information from Global Partnership for Education

Girls and boys who learn to read, write and count will provide a better future for their families and countries. With improved education, so many other areas are positively affected. In short, education has the power to make the world a better place. Education is more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is one of the most important investments a country can make in its people and its future and is critical to reducing poverty and inequality:

·        Education gives people critical skills and tools to help them better provide for themselves and their children

·        Education helps people work better and can create opportunities for sustainable and viable economic growth now and into the future

·        Education helps fight the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases, reduces mother and child mortality and helps improve health

·        Education encourages transparency, good governance, stability and helps fight against corruption.

The impact of investment in education is profound: education results in raising income, improving health, promoting gender equality, mitigating climate change, and reducing poverty.

Here is a breakdown of the impact of education on people’s lives.

Income & Growth Education is the key to unlocking a country's potential for economic growth:

·        If all students in low income countries left school with basic reading skills 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. This is equal to a 12% cut in global poverty. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

·        One extra year of schooling increases an individual's earnings by up to 10%. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

·        Wages, agricultural income and productivity – all critical for reducing poverty – are higher where women involved in agriculture receive a better education. (EFA GMR, UNESCO )

·        Each additional year of schooling raises average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.37%. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

·        An increase of one standard deviation in student scores on international assessments of literacy and mathematics is associated with a 2% increase in annual GDP per capita growth. (World Bank)

Health The most effective investment for achieving long-term health benefits is educating girls and women. Girls' education is often the single most powerful factor affecting health outcomes such as infant mortality, maternal mortality, the propensity of mothers to seek modern birth options, the availability of those options because more and better trained birth attendants are available, the rate of risky teenage births, and the number of children she will have.

·        Each extra year of a mother's schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5% to 10%. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

·        A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past age 5. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

·        Over the past four decades, the global increase in women's education has prevented more than 4 million child deaths. (Lancet Study)

·        In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 1.8 million children's lives could be saved if their mothers had at least secondary education. (EFA GMR 2011, UNESCO)

·        Chronically malnourished children are 20 % less literate (Save the Children Report)

Gender Equality Education is key to women's rights, self-expression and civic engagement:

·        One additional year of school reduces the probability of becoming a mother by 7.3 % for women who have completed at least primary education. (World Bank)

·        Investing in girls education could boost sub-Saharan Africa agricultural output by 25%. (IFPRI)

·        One additional school year can increase a woman's earnings by 10% to 20%. (World Bank)

·        Increasing the number of women with secondary education by 1% can increase annual per capita economic growth by 0.3%. (World Bank)

·        Some countries lose more than $1 billion a year by failing to educate girls to the same level as boys (Plan International. "Paying the price. The economic cost of failing to educate girls")

Other Education has an impact on many other areas such as:
Peace and Democracy

·        If the enrollment rate for secondary schooling is 10 percentage points higher than the average, the risk of war is reduced by about 3 percentage points (World Bank, Understanding Civil War)

·        Literate people are more likely to participate in the democratic process and exercise their civil rights. (UNESCO)

·        Education has been identified as one of the indicators or conditions for determining peace within societies. (UNESCO)

Agricultural Outputs
·        Investing in girls education could boost sub-Saharan Africa agricultural output by 25%. (IFPRI)

·        Wages, agricultural income and productivity – all critical for reducing poverty – are higher where women involved in agriculture receive a better education. (EFA GMR, UNESCO)

The Millennium Declaration & Development Goals: A Blueprint for Progress

Source: www.un.org/millenniumgoals

In September of 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in human history gathered for the Millennium Summit at United Nations headquarters in New York. In that pivotal year, representatives from 189 Member States of the United Nations met to reflect on their common destiny. The nations were interconnected as never before, with increased globalization promising faster growth, higher living standards and new opportunities.

Yet their citizens’ lives were starkly disparate.  As some States looked ahead to prosperity and global cooperation, many barely had a future, being mired in miserable, unending conditions of poverty, conflict and a degraded environment. Some 1.1 billion people were – and still are – forced to live on less than $1 a day, and 30 per cent of these are children. Even in the world’s richest countries, one in every six children still lives below the national poverty line.

A further look at humanity’s challenges: Almost 11 million children, more than 29,000 a day, die before the age of five, mostly from preventable causes. Those that survive suffer other consequences: malnutrition leading to stunting and disability, a lack of access to health care and education, and an increased risk of suffering from exploitation, violence and HIV/AIDS.

A UNICEF-sponsored study by the University of Bristol and the London School of Economics concluded that over 1 billion children –more than half the children in developing countries – suffer from at least one form of severe deprivation. Such as:

·        One in every three children in the developing world – over 500 million children – has no access whatsoever to sanitation facilities; one in five has no access to safe water. 

·        Over 140 million children in developing countries – 13 per cent of those aged 7 to 18 years – have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa, where 27 per cent of boys also miss out on schooling, and 33 per cent among rural children in the Middle East and North Africa.

·        AIDS has killed one or both parents of an estimated 15 million children worldwide; 12 million of these are in sub-Saharan Africa. The number of orphaned children is projected to exceed 25 million by the end of the decade. (UNAIDS, July 2004)

To begin addressing these crises back in 2000, the convened leaders set down the Millennium Declaration, a series of collective priorities for peace and security, poverty reduction, the environment and human rights – essential steps for the advancement of humankind, as well as for the immediate survival for a significant portion of it. Human development, they agreed, is the key to sustaining social and economic progress in all countries, as well as contributing to global security. 

But how would the world community achieve these priorities? Following further meetings with many world agencies, the delegation also drew up a blueprint for a better future: the Millennium Development Goals. By 2015, the leaders pledged, the world would achieve measurable improvements in the most critical areas of human development. The goals establish yardsticks for measuring these results, not just for developing countries but for countries that help to fund development programmes and for the multilateral institutions, like the World Bank or the United Nations Development Programme, that help countries implement them.

The Millennium Development Goals Set Priorities for Children

Though the Goals are for all humankind, they are primarily about children. Why:

·        Because six of the eight goals relate directly to children. Meeting the last two will also make critical improvements in their lives.

·        Because meeting the Goals is most critical for children. Children are most vulnerable when people lack essentials like food, water, sanitation and health care. They are the first to die when basic needs are not met.

·        Because children have rights. Each child is born with the right to survival, food and nutrition, health and shelter, an education, and to participation, equality and protection – rights agreed to, among others, in the 1989 international human rights treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The Convention has been ratified by 192 states, every country in the world except two. The Millennium Development Goals must be met for these basic human rights to be realized.

·        Because reducing poverty starts with children. Helping children reach their full potential is also investing in the very progress of humanity. For it is in the crucial first years that interventions make the biggest difference in a child’s physical, intellectual and emotional development. And investing in children means achieving development goals faster, as children constitute a large percentage of the world’s poor.

Barriers to Education

Children all over the world are prevented from receiving an education. During one of your first sessions at the GYF, you will be discussing the Barriers to Education. Be prepared to share your thoughts on the below. Some of the barriers that exist include (see graphic).