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Press Release for Global Action Week 2010
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| 30-03-2010 1:55 am In April this year, children and adults from all over the world will be participating in an international campaign with the purpose of giving every child and adult in the world the opportunity to get an education by 2015, the 1GOAL: Education for All. 1GOAL has been launched to coincide with the FIFA Football World Cup. The aim of Global Action week is to give priority to education financing even in the face of the economic downturn. |
 The event is being organized by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of charities, trade unions and citizens’ groups worldwide. GCE is a civil society movement that aims to end the global education crisis. Together GCE aims to hold governments to account for their promises repeatedly made to provide Education for All. The mission of GCE is to make sure that governments act now to deliver the right of every girl, boy, woman and man to a free quality public education. Civil society organizations, trade unions, child rights campaigners, teachers, parents and students have joined together to demand universal education, since the formation of GCE in 1999, millions of people and thousands of organizations in over 100 countries have united to demanding Education for All.
The GCE Cambodia Leading Committee consists of seven NGO members, including NGO Education Partnership (NEP), Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), Aide et Action (AeA), Disability Action Council(DAC), World Vision Cambodia (WVC), Deaf Development Program (DDP), and Krousar Yoeung (KrY), representing an additional 26 local and international NGOs working in the education sector in Cambodia. Moreover, UNESCO is a part of the organizing team for the Global Action Week in Cambodia and is a strong supporter of the Global Campaign for Education though-out the year.
Education is a basic human right and an essential factor for overcoming poverty. Education has the potential to change the world for the better and if we invest in education now, we will reap the dividends later. As President Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union Address "In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education." And we could not agree more. An illiterate person may not be able to protect oneself from life threatening illnesses or provide for one’s family effectively. Literacy is also a pre-requisite for full citizenship and participation in democracy and society. Yet despite this, globally, there are still 774 million adults and 75 million children who cannot read and write. The majority of those who cannot read and write are in developing countries and two thirds of the adults who cannot read and write are women and girls.
GCE international coordinates the Global Action Week on education in April, every year with a different theme. This year, 2010, the theme is Education Financing. GCE Cambodia believes that this theme is particularly relevant for Cambodia, as the world recovering from the after shocks of the global financial crisis. The suggested slogan world wide for the Action Week 2010 is ‘1 Goal: Education for All’. With the campaign planned around the 2010 FIFA Football/Soccer World Cup in South Africa the GCE Board has agreed to link a lot of the Global Action Week plans to the 1GOAL: Education for All Campaign.
Football has the largest following in the world as a single sport and so the FIFA platform provides a good opportunity to reach out to a wider public than ever before with the message that the global community must act to make Education For All a reality. The GCE will raise awareness through local football competitions in several provinces as part of the GCE ‘1 Goal – Lesson for all’ where students and teachers will be involved in sports activities. GCE Cambodia has met with the Department of Physical Education and Sports for Students based at the Olympic Stadium and have agreed to sponsor the sports competition in Svay Rieng province, between the 26th of March and the 9th of April 2010 with 20 GCE banners and around 400 t-shirts all with GCE logos and slogans; “Finance our right to equal education”, “Education beats poverty” and “invest in education – invest in growth”. In addition, GCE Cambodia plans to organize events with the NGO SALT that runs a football league in Battembang, Palin, and Poipet.
MoEYS, UNESCO and GCE Cambodia will jointly organize an event to launch the Global Monitoring Report (GMR), in conjunction of the Global Action Week with the theme of Education Financing. The 2010 GMR Reaching the Marginalized was globally launched in Jan 2010 in New York City, by the Secretary-General of the UN and the DG of UNESCO. The half day event will take place in Phnom Penh during the last week of April. The event will provide a chance to share information at the national level, and will feature presentations from UNESCO, MoEYS and GCE Cambodia. MoEYS will have the chance to share best practices of policies to that aim to reach marginalized groups in Cambodia, GCE will present NGO recommendations and UNESCO will present the global perspective on the GMR. The event will have approximately 120 participants from MoEYS, NGOs, donors, and UN agencies, as well as, media representatives. The proposed date is the 26th of April 2010 at the Imperial Garden Hotel, in Phnom Penh.
Moreover, to ensure the link to education financing, GCE will also organize a series of one day training workshops in 5 provinces, initially Oddar Meanchey, Kratie, Siem Reap, Kampong Cham and Stung Treng. The participants will be the PoE and financial officers, mainly school directors and some NGOs members. The main purpose of the workshops are to build capacity of the participants to ensure they have a better understanding of the PB budget recording and reporting and how it's linked to the Public Financial Management (PFM).
Global Action Week will remind everyone of the importance of allocating more resources to education to ensure that everyone gets an education. Moreover, Global Action Week is a chance for everyone including teachers, learners, parents, government representatives, sports stars and other community members to call on governments all around the world to finance education.
For more information:
Email Nono at
nono@nepcambodia.org
Follow GCE Cambodia on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/GCECambodia
Check out pictures from GCE Cambodia events at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gcecambodia/
See what international football stars and celebrities support the 1Goal campaign at:
www.join1goal.org
Check out the international Global Campaign for Education website:
www.campaignforeducation.org
See what teams are playing in the SALT football league:
www.hometeamz.com/saltacademy/home.html?org_id=358&page;=info&info;_id=10044
Click to download file: Press Release for Global Action Week 2010 25-03-2010.pdf
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