One billion people in the world live in absolute poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day.
Often they cannot afford the cost of schooling, and need their children to work to help support the family. Some 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 – or one in every six children in the world – are working. As the lead agency for the decade on Education for Sustainable Development and in partnership with other agencies, UNESCO works to improve this situation. It does this, for example, through school-feeding programmes and projects on education for child labour prevention.
