1 million children sign to make dreams come true

May 31, 2018

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Worldwide, 103 million youth cannot read – 60% of whom are girls. The International Finance Facility for Education (IFFED) is a groundbreaking plan to tackle this crisis. When up and running, it will help millions of children go to school, and prepare millions of young people to enter the global workforce.

More than a million of BRAC’s students and young learners from nearly 17,000 schools and over 7,000 centres across Bangladesh have signed a call for an education funding plan. This initiative is a contribution to ensure that quality education becomes a reality for every child. The petition was delivered to the UN Secretary-General by youth campaigners of TheirWorld in early May, demanding that world leaders to give more children a quality education.

A global demand to make impossible, possible.

Over 260 million children and youth are currently out of school, with millions dropping out before they even reach secondary school. If the situation does not change, by 2030, over half the world’s children and young people – 825 million of them – will not have the basic skills or qualifications needed for the modern workforce.

Worldwide, 103 million youth cannot read – 60% of whom are girls. The International Finance Facility for Education (IFFED) is a groundbreaking plan to tackle this crisis. When up and running, it will help millions of children go to school, and prepare millions of young people to enter the global workforce.

It is a bold solution to the education crisis, aiming to increase funding for education across developing countries and fill the persistent funding gap. IFFED conducted this call for this education funding plan. BRAC, with its massive network across the country and globally, tapped into those resources to respond to the call.

Children in BRAC’s primary school in Korail slum, Dhaka.

“We are very happy to join this campaign,” said Profulla Chandra Barman, the programme head of BRAC’s education programme.

“We have 650 branch offices across Bangladesh and we operate more than 30,000 schools, 2,900 libraries and 5,000 adolescent clubs,” he adds, “We explained to our staff why we needed this petition for both Bangladesh and the world. They communicated that message to students, teachers, librarians, youth and others. That is how we collected over one million signatures – all on paper.”

The education programme prepared a concept note with a format for the signature collection. An enthusiastic team of three women- Irin, Razia and Mehnaz, accomplished this enormous task with a dedicated team who collected the signatures from the field. Young learners and students were quick to respond, realising their signatures could potentially fulfill the dreams of millions of children across the world.

 

Dil Afrose Duetee is deputy manager of communications, planning and knowledge management of BRAC’s education programme.

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