Today, Monday, January 24, is the United Nations’ International Day of Education designed to be a platform to showcase the most important transformations that have to be nurtured to realize everyone’s fundamental right to education and build a more sustainable, inclusive, and peaceful futures.
Its purpose is also to generate debate around how to strengthen education as a public endeavour and common good, how to steer the digital transformation, support teachers, safeguard the planet and unlock the potential in every person to contribute to collective well-being and our shared home.
At Bread and Water for Africa®, we wholeheartedly agree with the UN’s statement: “Education offers children a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future.”
That’s why in 2021, thanks to our generous supporters, a total of 1,840 children were able to attend school through our school fees support program.
For example, in Chad, a total of 200 orphaned and destitute primary and secondary school students from the village of Lolo were sponsored with school fees, uniforms and school supplies; in Kenya, more than 200 students benefitted from the Seed School’s new school construction project; and in Sierra Leone, a total of 990 students received quality primary and secondary school educations provided by Faith Healing Development Organization’s five nursery and primary schools and four secondary schools.
But the challenge remains great. The UN estimates that 258 million children and adolescents around the world do not have the opportunity to complete — or even enter — school.
In sub-Saharan Africa less that 40 percent of girls complete lower secondary school, according to the UN, something that we at at Bread and Water for Africa® are striving to rectify.
“Without inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, countries will not succeed in achieving gender equality and breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth and adults behind,” states the UN.
It’s something upon which we could not agree more.
