FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jennifer Rigg, Executive Director, jrigg@gce-us.org,
Katie Loos, Research and Communications Fellow, kloos@gce-us.org
Washington, D.C. (May 3rd, 2019)
About Global Action Week for Education:
Global Action Week for Education took place from April 24th to May 1st to highlight the actions that you take to promote global education & encourage others to take action to address the urgent need for universal quality education. This year, the theme was “My Education, My Right(s): Making the right to an inclusive, equitable, quality, free public education a reality.”
The aim of Global Action Week for Education 2019 is to merge global and local connections through interpersonal experiences. By wielding the power of storytelling as a tool to create a network of narratives, the Global Campaign for Education movement strengthens its commitment to human rights. “My Education, My Right(s)” is a call to action rising up from the voices of individuals, and disseminating across a united front. The focus on personal stories empowers advocates at all levels of activism to engage with a range of issues barring access to quality education globally.
Today, one of the most pressing issues facing universal accessibility is displacement and the fate of students in regions of conflict and crisis.
There are 260 million children waiting to go to school. Many children currently face barriers, including poverty, discrimination and emergencies. These children tell us that the #1 thing they want more than anything is to be able to attend school and learn.
For children who live in emergency settings, the barriers that they face are tenfold. 75 million out-of-school children must contend with persecution, inequality, war, famine, conflict and emergencies daily.
To stress this urgency, GCE-US called on education advocates to contact their Members of Congress, share their stories, and spread the word that education is a basic human right. Over the course of the week, we invited you all to take the following steps, and you succeeded!
- Students shared their stories using the GAWE 2019 Student and Teacher Activity Packet and discovered the impact of emergencies on access to quality education.
- Partners and viewers joined ChildFund International for a discussion on Preventing School-Based Violence at the GAWE 2019 kick-off event. Watch it here.
- Advocates reached out and spoke up online to urge their representatives to support global education funding, and you can too!
And, there’s still work to be done! You can take action all year by donating to ensure that every child has a right to quality, inclusive education!