Global Education So Much More Than Schoolwork

Last October, I took my first trip to Africa. I was excited to join a group of American mothers with the UN Foundation to witness UNICEF health programs taking place in Ugandan primary schools. I was thrilled that I would able to look into the faces of children I advocate for every day as a global poverty activist with RESULTS! For the entire span of my young daughters’ lives, I have stood up for children all over the world to have access to primary school and basic health care. I was elated to finally have the chance to witness the fruits of our aid in person.

When I boarded the plane, however, I was nervous about what I would find. Would I witness poverty so crushing that I’d be shocked into inaction? My friends told me that my life would change and the trip would open my eyes to how another part of the world lived. Yet I wondered, “What if it’s so depressing I can’t bear to continue my work anymore? What if I’m not really making the difference I think I am?” In fact, my journey did open my eyes in a fashion, but not quite in the way I expected.

One of our site visits was to Railway Primary School. Nestled among the slums of Kampala, Railway serves children deep in the clutches of poverty. Many of the students are AIDS orphans. It’s true that on the surface I did see conditions that have never even occurred to many Americans:

• ·      100 students to a classroom with only teachers in each class
• ·      No electricity
• ·      Only one source of water at the whole school for washing and cooking
• ·      A library with hardly any bound books. Most books were made by older students to teach younger ones to read.

I admit that I would be outraged if my own daughters experienced this in our suburban school north of Chicago. Still, I suppose I was prepared to see this reality as related to me by fellow activists, expert speakers, and documentaries. Yet I found other things that I wasn’t expecting:

• ·      Students divided up into multi-age “families” so they can look out for each other when they have no family structure at home
• ·      Young girls and boys learning not just their colors and ABC’s, but singing songs about hygiene and reciting poems about how to protect themselves from pneumonia and malaria.
• ·      Hand-painted signs everywhere on the grounds assuring young girls their bodies are their own and reminding them about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and early sex
• ·      A headmistress who came up with an innovative program to have girls sell crafts to buy school supplies to keep them away from sexual predators who trade pencils and notebooks for sex with 11 and 12 year old girls.

These experiences in the Railway classrooms expanded my ideas of the function of a school and what a teacher truly can be to a student no matter where in the world the student happens to be.

You see, as a global education advocate, I was always prepared with an armload of talking points about how kids need to learn so they can hold jobs and have opportunities in life. I could tell my members of Congress about how a girl who goes to school one extra year can earn as much as 20% more as an adult. Basic literacy could lift 171 million people out of poverty – a 12% cut in world poverty. However, literacy and economics don't tell the whole story. What I saw firsthand in Uganda taught me how important the other aspects of school are that I was taking for granted: health survival skills, self-respect, socialization, unity, and – yes – even love.

Many of the Railway students have no real caregiver and nowhere to go but the street because an uncle or aunt’s one room home is used for a business. Sometimes they have nothing to eat. But for the time they are at school, they are fed. They are cared for. They are busy and productive. They are respected. They are safe.  The value of these things cannot be overstated for the development of strong, compassionate adults.

While it was important for me to witness poverty with my own eyes, it was critical that I left inspired by what incredible achievements are possible when we all work together across the miles. My eyes were indeed opened to the true value of school and teachers to children with so little. I’m grateful I met the children of Railway and several other schools who taught me so much. I returned to education advocacy joyfully and hopefully because I have seen their faces and I will not let them down.

If you would like to join me, consider one of these actions for Global Action Week:

1. Join the Global Campaign for Education to learn more about the need for global education
2. Make a donation today to RESULTS to support our advocacy to provide access to primary school to all children everywhere.

Look at their faces in this post. YOU can make all the difference in their lives.

Sequestration: What can the average person do?

So...sequestration is happening. What is does that mean? It means Congress could not compromise and make thoughtful decisions about where to save money and cut excess. An across the board cut will be implemented that will hurt all programs, whether they be effective or no, whether they help people in poverty or no, whether we want them or no. We sent Congress to make strategic and smart decisions. This is the opposite of that. There are no winners here...unless you count the viruses and germs like Tuberculosis and HIV, which will clearly be healthier and spreading because our global health funding was cut.

Here are a few of the things that will happen because of sequestration cuts (from the Coalition of Human Needs):

• WIC nutrition aid denied to 600,000 American children and mothers

• 70,000 American children in poverty without Head Start

• 30,000 American children in poverty without child care

Globally, as a result of sequestration of contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria (from Oxfam):

• 1.5 million fewer insecticide-treated mosquito nets will be available, leading to 4,000 deaths from malaria
• 54,800 fewer TB patients will receive treatment, leading to 6,600 more TB deaths.
• 61,000 people will not be treated for HIV/AIDS.

(photo credit: Patrick Hughes)

And that's just a few examples. These programs don't add up to nearly enough to have an impact on our federal budget. Looking at the foreign aid alone, less than 1% of our national budget is spent on poverty-focused foreign aid. This is help for people living on less than $1.25 a day. This is help that would eradicate polio and fight TB...transmittable diseases that can be a threat to even us here in the U.S. It makes no sense not to protect the most vulnerable folks in the world and in our country just because of a refusal to compromise. We cannot balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so why submit them to terrible suffering?

But, back to our question: What can the average person do?

SPEAK UP!!!!

(photo credit: RESULTS Educational Fund)

RESULTS is an organization committed to empowering everyday people to exercise their own political power by urging Congress to take action for people in poverty. This is the action suggested by RESULTS from February 26. Now, that the cuts are inevitable, your call can be more an expression of disappointment, frustration, outrage or whatever you are feeling. But your member of Congress NEEDS to know this. There are appropriations discussions for 2014 right around the corner and some of this damage can be helped next year...but ONLY if they hear from you and know what you want!


From RESULTS Weekly U.S. Poverty Update, Feb 26:

On Friday, March 1, the "sequestration" budget cuts are set to begin. If these cuts are fully implemented, they will have devastating effects on Head Start, Early Head Start, and child care assistance. Based on estimates from the Obama Administration, 70,000 children would lose Head Start services (plus 14,000 staff would lose their jobs) and 30,000 children and families would lose child care assistance under the Child Care Development Block Grant.  While these manufactured political crises may hold some personal political advantage for lawmakers, its everyday Americans – particularly those Americans struggling in poverty – who pay the price. It’s time for Congress to get to work and put an end to these endless charade.

TAKE ACTION: Take two minutes to call you House and Senate offices today to tell them to stop punishing low-income Americans through mindless and reckless budget cuts. Dial the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 ask for your representative or senator. When the receptionist answers, say:

My name is ______________ and I am a constituent of Rep./Sen. _______________ from __________________. I am calling about the arbitrary budget cuts set to begin this Friday, March 1. If nothing is done, 70,000 children will be forced out of Head Start classrooms, 30,000 families will lose child care, and 600,000 young children and moms will lose WIC nutrition aid, just to name a few. Congress is playing politics with people’s lives. Please tell Rep./Sen. __________ that his constituents are sick and tired of these manufactured budget crises. Tell him/her to protect and strengthen our investments in reducing poverty and to support a bipartisan, balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes new revenues.

After making one call, hang up and call again. Be sure to call your representative and both senators. If you don’t know who your members of Congress are, you can do a search on our Elected Officials page. Once you call, copy and paste this section into an email send it to your local networks, family, and friends. Urge them to take action today!

Because of the impending deadline, calls are best. However, if you cannot make calls, you can send an email urging Congress to protect Head Start and child care using our online e-mail alert.

Charity Miles: Miles of Smiles

310 miles. 

That's how far I've run since I started running in earnest again in my post-40 life last year and turned on my Nike+ running app to track how far I've gone. I started running again for me and I started running for charities. I've noted before in my blog that I'm not a person who runs for the sheer fun of it, so it helps me to be motivated by doing some good in the world to help others. Because 310 miles seems like a lot of work to me and somebody's life should be saved if I'm going to bother to do all that!

Most times, it's a portion of the race fee that helps a charity. Sometimes, I even fundraise and ask my friends to pledge. And then...this year a revolution happened. Charity Miles!

Charity Miles is a free app I use on my iphone that lets every single mile count to benefit charities from a short list of great organizations. You can run, bike, or walk with your Charity Miles app engaged. It tracks your mileage using the GPS on your phone and gives money (20 cents per mile for runners) to the charity of your choice for EVERY MILE! Sponsors donate money to Charity Miles and then all you have to do is exercise to do something good for yourself and for your chosen cause. For instance, when I started using it, when I started I always ran for...

because I advocate for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in my volunteer work with RESULTS all the time and they rock! Charity Miles tracked my mileage, my time, and gave me a real time read out of how many anti-malaria bed nets I'd earned for someone in need! HOW AWESOME!!! Nothing more inspiring than to see the impact of your effort in real time when you're working out.

Well, then I got the bright idea to turn on Charity Miles on the morning walk to take the kids to school and the afternoon walk home. And sometimes to just put the phone in a kid's pocket when she was running around in circles in the park. Yay! We racked up even more miles! But then the kids' got wise to what I was doing and insisted that sometimes we had to start walking for

because they like to earn vaccinations for puppies and kitties. Ok..fine :)

Meantime, the kids and I started training bigtime for the Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon weekend races, happening this weekend by the way! I'm signed up for the 13.1 mile half marathon, the 9 yr old is doing the 5K with me, and the 7 yr old is doing a 400m dash. We are fundraising for Shot@Life to bring vaccines for polio, measles, rotavirus, and pneumococcal virus to kids in developing nations. Lo and behold, just before I went to Washington DC for a trip to lobby Congress for global vaccines a new charity popped up on Charity Miles...

Well, what could be more perfect? Walking around Capitol Hill, I turned on my Charity Miles all day and earned money for polio vaccines. And in my training runs - the ones NOT on a treadmill because you DO actually have to be moving around in space for this to work - I've been earning more polio vaccines. And when I run 13.1 miles on Sunday...yep, more Charity Miles and more polio vaccines!

So next year, if I log 310 miles or event more, I know that they are going to be even more meaningful miles than last year. Please join me and turn on the Charity Miles app whenever you hit the road. Exercise is now a great way to save your own life AND someone else's, too!