This year’s Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) theme is “Transforming Education”. Definitions for this term vary, but transforming education at its core entails taking all learners’ unique backgrounds into account. This ensures that students’ specific situations are addressed so that they can go to school. Examples of transformative education include planning around students’ specific healthcare conditions to ensure they can go to school, or taking students’ family obligations into account so they can continue their educational journey. Education is considered a human right under the policy of “transforming education”.
Transforming education garnered attention in 2022 as a result of the United Nations’s Transforming Education Summit hosted during the 77th General Assembly. The Summit was coordinated in response to a global education crisis presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, according to the United Nations’s 2023 High-Level Political Forum, the international community is at the halfway point to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. There’s no time to wait when it comes to promising that SDG 4, Quality Education, will be accomplished by the 2030 deadline.
As part of our GAWE engagement, GCE-US launched the “What Transformative Education Means to Me” campaign, in which we highlight thoughts from education activists on what transforming education means to them. Insight included empowering future generations to solve challenges in their communities, equitable access for neurodivergent students, using education to foster peaceful environments, and more! GCE-US will feature the words of these distinguished advocates during the next several days of the Global Action Week for Education.
On April 22nd, 2024, GCE-US hosted our first hybrid GAWE Coalition Meeting in Washington D.C., following the theme of Transformative Education! We had the wonderful opportunity to hear from accomplished speakers including Amal Al-Barghouthi from Humanity & Inclusion, Patience Agbamu from the Sterling Inclusive Education & Development Initiative, Dianah Nelsen from Education Cannot Wait, and Marta Ferede from UNESCO about their work in transforming education. Guest speakers spoke about their work in bringing education to students in conflict zones, fostering more inclusive education in schools, engaging young people in the global education movement, and the UN’s efforts to make education for all students a reality. GCE-US celebrates the importance of quality education and the work that all of our partners do to create a more free, safe, and educated world.
We hope that you will mobilize to transform education with us from April 22nd - 26th for this year’s GAWE!
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