At 9am this morning Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser announced the launch of her new global education initiative that will help provide a better future for all children.
We watched a great video that was extremely powerful and emotive on the current situation. We then heard from Alek Wek a former supermodel from Sudan and representative from UNHCR and ambassador of the new project between UNHCR and Educate a child. She spoke of her own personal story of growing up in a country in conflict. She spoke about through educating a girl, you educate a family and you educate a community.
You may not be aware but there are an incredible 61 million primary age children out of school and nearly half of these children live in conflict zones. I just can’t believe this but it is true. This is why this new initiative is so important.
Her highness will be meeting with Ban Ki-Moon and others later this week to officially launch the initiative that will aim to provide an education for the 61 million children, giving them high quality teaching and a sense of citizenship for the future.
Her highness discussed many examples of where this was happening for example in Iraq, once a leader in education in the Arab word has suffered severely as a result of three decades of conflict. Literacy rates were the highest in the 1980’s where as nowadays 1/4 of Iraqis are now illiterate.
She finished by saying the following ‘Education gives us opportunity and influence. It also gives us a clear moral obligation to use those gifts to protect that right for others.