By Selamawit Adugna Bekele, Global Youth Ambassador for A World at School
On June 25 the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) – the world’s only multilateral partnership devoted to improving the provision of quality basic education – held its second replenishment conference in Brussels.
At this conference all GPE partners came together to renew the commitment to give all children (especially in the poorest countries) access to school and quality learning.
To achieve educational outcomes in poverty-stricken and conflict-affected countries, GPE requested donor partners to contribute $3.5billion to support the annual cost of sending 29million children in partner developing countries to school in the next four years. Donor countries, including the United States, made a pledge of about $2.1billion, shy of the target. It was a good step but much more needs to be done.
Leading up to the conference, in my role as a Global Youth Ambassador for A World At School, I went on a tour with the campaign organisation RESULTS Educational Fund, urging US lawmakers and their constituents around the country to support the GPE’s replenishment effort with a two-year pledge of $250million to the fund.
I travelled to cities in Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, New Mexico, Connecticut and Nebraska. With more on the way, my story has been published in Tacoma Weekly, The Olympian, Thirdeyemom.com, Humanosphere and The News Tribune, and was conveyed to congressional offices and key contacts in the US administration.
In town halls, meetings and conversations with media, volunteers, congressional staffers and ordinary people across American cities, I got a chance to tell my story – why I am speaking up for education and the difference going to school can make for an Ethiopian girl like me.
I told my audiences that I joined the World At School’s movement to get every child into to school and learning because advocating for education is the most effective contribution I can make to address the big picture of development in my country and around the world.
I first started my career as a teacher in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. I was assigned to teach in a school located in a very economically deprived part of the city.
Generally I was only a few years older than my students but sometimes I was the same age. I became very close to them as a teacher and my position as the Gender Desk coordinator gave me the opportunity to listen to the barriers they were facing towards their education.
In this role I was able to rally with other teachers to resolve these issues: from labour exploitation at home to not having a place to sleep, from sexual violence from relatives to harassment from teachers, from parents unable to buy them a book to spending the time out of school at a friend’s place because there is nothing at home – no food, no support, no hope for their education.
I can never forget one of my students, Mahlet (whose name as been changed to protect her). Mahlet was born in Addis Ababa to uneducated parents. Her father died of HIV/AIDS when she was 12 and she barely remembers his face.