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)
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)
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).
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