Malala Calls on Global Leaders to Fund Education

Malala Calls on Global Leaders to Fund Education
250 million children are unable to read or write by the time they reach grade 4. Across the world, 57 million children are still without access to school. Today in Brussels education leaders from around the globe are speaking out for these children.

Global Partnership for Education is an international organization that focuses on supporting countries’ efforts to educate children from early primary school to secondary school. The GPE is comprised of donor governments, regional and international agencies, development banks, the private sector, and civil society organizations/NGOS. The GPE held a pledging conference in 2011 and were able to raise close to $2 billion dollars from 60 partners. These pledges have allowed GPE to build, rehabilitate, and equip 52,600 classrooms and train about 300,000 teachers mostly in primary education.

Earlier this month Malala Yousafzai joined other leading global education advocates by supporting the GPE. As a champion for the GPE, Malala has been speaking up for the rights of children to receive an education, and urging businesses, civil societies, and governments to work together on delivering education for all. The Malala Fund also provided a grant that allowed the first ever youth delegation of 12 young education advocates to attend the Second Replenishment Conference.

The Global Partnership for Education held their second pledging
conference today, June 26th, in Brussels with a goal of raising 3.5
billion dollars. Malala released a video this morning featuring children in developing countries fighting for their right to receive an education. Malala urged global leaders to work together to fund education and fulfill the promise of an education for every child.

The summit in Brussels has ended, and they have raised eight times the amount they had hoped for. The GPE received $28.5 billion in funding for the education of millions of children in more than 60 developing countries. The contributions from across the globe are a sign that education crisis awareness by activists, such as Malala, can lead to meaningful action. Today there is more hope than ever that the 57 million children without access to a school will be able to receive an education in the near future.

Cover Photo Credit: Global Partnership for Education/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND