SEATTLE — A new fund called Education Cannot Wait was recently launched to tackle the difficulties of educating children in the midst of international crises.
According to the organization’s website, less than two percent of humanitarian aid goes towards this cause. The newly proposed fund aims to change that. Dubai Cares, the European Union, Netherlands, Norway, the UK Department for International Development and the United States have all already contributed to help the fund reach those whose lives have been uprooted by war and international disasters.
Education Cannot Wait has five core functions: to ensure that education is viewed as a priority by government in times of crisis, to inspire collaboration on all fronts to make that education a reality, to generate additional funding, to strengthen the ability of organizations to provide emotional support and to improve accountability to help determine what works and what does not.
In an interview with UNICEF, Gayle Smith, an administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said, “There is an urgent need to ensure that kids who are forced into refuge are not denied an education. Education Cannot Wait has the potential to chart the path forward by developing the tools we need to deliver education and offers the promise of unlocking new sources of funding,”
Without initiatives like the new fund, the picture for education for children like refugees is relatively bleak. Aside from the aforementioned lack of humanitarian aid being invested in education, children in crises are often unable to make use of even the educational resources within their native countries. For refugee children in particular, although some host countries provide schooling, not all do, and the schooling that is provided must often contend with budgetary constraints and other scarce resources.
According to Educate A Child, “Teacher-pupil ratios [in refugee schools]average as high as 1:70… Available data indicates that many refugee children are learning very little in schools; among Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, less than six percent of refugee children reached benchmark reading fluency by grade four.”
Education Cannot Wait hopes that by prioritizing childhood education and allow a more collaborative approach between public and private partners, they will be able to change these numbers and provide the resources for giving children worldwide access to a quality education.
– Sabrina Santos
Photo: Flickr