Education empowers
To millions of people around the world, the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be remembered as the beginning of the biggest global education campaign ever. As part of the 2010 World Cup legacy, the 1 Goal Education for All campaign is bringing together footballers, fans, charities, corporations and individuals to help achieve its aim of quality education for everyone.
Millions of children in Africa and worldwide are still not enjoying their right to education. About 60 per cent of them are girls. These children can’t go to school for a number of reasons, including illness such as HIV and Aids, disability and poverty. In addition, millions of adults also lack basic literacy skills.
Forum
1 Goal aims to recruit tens of millions of supporters through a mass sign-up campaign to help ensure education for all children globally. This will be done by urging governments to give more aid to education, promoting greater investment for more teachers, textbooks and schools in developing countries and highlighting the importance of sending children to school.
The 1 Goal campaign forms part of the Education for All (EFA) goals of the World Education Forum. The first EFA meeting took place in 2000 in Dakar, Senegal (West Africa). Here, members of the international community committed themselves to ensuring access to quality basic education for all children, young people and adults by 2015.
Summit
On 11 July, the final day of the 2010 World Cup, the South African government hosted a 2010 FIFA World Cup Education Summit in Pretoria. The summit was attended by heads of state and important world leaders, as well as ambassadors for the 1 Goal campaign. They include well-known actors, football stars and other famous celebrities.
The aim was to renew the commitment made 10 years earlier in Dakar and to build on what has already been achieved.
The Pretoria Summit resolved to ensure that learners would leave school with the necessary learning and life skills to enter adult life and the work force.
Why education for all?
Education for all is vitally important because it:
- Develops people by giving them skills and knowledge to help them reach higher goals
- empowers people to improve their lives, especially women
- fights poverty and helps to grow the country’s economy by increasing employment opportunities
- reduces the chances of getting HIV and Aids
- improves the health of mothers and babies
- enables families to cope better with illness, for example, a child born to a literate mother is 50 per cent more likely to survive past the age of five years.
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