Covered in Washington Post, Huffington Post, IHT, LA Times, Charlotte Observer, Las Vegas Sun, Japan Today

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092503952.html
NEW YORK -- A coalition of governments, charities and U.N. agencies pledged $4.5 billion on Thursday in an effort to get all the world's children in school by 2015.
A meeting _ which included British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Australian Prime Minister Mark Rudd, Jordan's Queen Rania, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick and former child laborers _ was meant to boost the effort to eradicate illiteracy and provide universal primary schooling by 2015.

That was the target year established by a U.N. summit in 2000, but as Brown noted, the pace at this point would not reach the goal even by the end of this century.
Among those joining in to try and change that were rock star humanitarians Bono and Bob Geldof, who pledged to do their part by opening two new teacher training colleges in Malawi and Rwanda. The soccer federation FIFA chipped in, too.

The donations were announced at Thursday's "Class of 2015: Education For All" pledging summit, which has a goal of getting 75 million more children into school _ and ending discrimination against girls, who are frequently the last to be sent to school and the first to be pulled out in much of the world.

The meeting opened with appeals by two girls who escaped from child labor with the help of humanitarian groups. Devli Kumari, 11, was born in an Indian stone quarry where her whole family worked as bonded wage slaves. Ablaavi Agbodjan from Togo told the crowd in French that she now hopes to go to college and become a doctor.

"Why aren't more girls in school?" asked Queen Rania. "Because they are fetching water from wells that are miles away."

One out of four women cannot read or write, said Kailash Satyarthi, president of the Global Campaign for Education.

He praised the generosity of a few nations _ naming Britain, Netherlands and Norway _ but urged more support from G-8 nations, specifically encouraging the United States, Japan, Germany and Italy do more.

Applause broke out when it was announced that an e-mail had just been received from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who hailed their goals and promised, if elected, to sign a $2 billion U.S. "Global Education Fund" first proposed by Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The goal of universal primary education was first promised as a fundamental right in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the U.N.'s core documents.
Since 2000, the campaign has brought 40 million more children into schools, Brown said. Zoellick cited Cambodia, which raised its rate of enrollment in primary schools from 50 percent to over 80 percent in just five years, as a success story.

The pledging conference was one of many international meetings taking place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

U.N. Receives New Pledges of Aid Totalling $16 Billion By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, announced on Thursday that the organization had received an additional $16 billion in pledges to fight a host of global ills like hunger and malaria, calling it an important signal that the world financial crisis would not impair aid efforts.

"That expression of the global commitment is all the more remarkable because it comes against the background of a global crisis," Mr. Ban said at a news conference.
But his optimism was not shared universally, with some other senior officials suggesting that the ripple effects from the credit crisis would eventually force governments to cut back the amount of money they actually donate.

The new pledges emerged from a special series of meetings attended by 96 heads of state or heads of government, which were held on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly, all focused on a series of eight development goals. They included $4.5 billion for education, $3 billion to combat malaria and $1.75 billion in aid to prevent starvation in the Horn of Africa.

Some of the bigger donations came from oil powers. Norway pledged $1 billion over 10 years to reduce child and infant mortality, while Saudi Arabia committed $500 million toward enrolling an additional 24 million children in primary school by 2010.

China offered to provide a battery of programs to improve agricultural yields, health care and education, as well as to promote clean energy in Africa. On the extended list of new pledges released by the United Nations, the only donation listed from the United States was $61 million over five years to help African farmers get better seeds.

A spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations said it was checking the figure, which was released late on Thursday.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister who shared the podium with Mr. Ban at the news conference, said an economic crisis was precisely the wrong time to reduce development aid. Given the rising cost of food, fertilizer and fuel, for example, it was more important than ever to help African farmers improve their yields, he said.

But other officials said people expecting the latest commitments to be met were kidding themselves because the financial crisis was likely to cause Western governments to cut their budgets. "Promising to get people more money for development?" Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said during a breakfast with reporters on Thursday. "This is not true. We are lying."

The Group of 8 industrialized nations pledged in 2005 to donate more than $25 billion to Africa by 2010, but figures released by the United Nations this month showed that only $4 billion had actually been provided.
Mr. Kouchner said the only likely way to increase aid was to get more donations from the private sector, which has been particularly effective in improving health care worldwide. Indeed, Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, also shared the spotlight with Mr. Ban and Mr. Brown at a series of events around the United Nations on Thursday.

Among the donations announced on Thursday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made among the largest commitments from a nongovernmental entity. It pledged $168.7 million for fighting malaria and joined with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation in a $76 million pledge to help poor farmers win competitive prices for their crops.

Critics of the Millennium Development Goals, as the eight targets are known, said they put too much emphasis on raising new money and not enough on improving the efficiency with which it is delivered.

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- British Prime Minister

Gordon Brown and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said $16 billion pledged yesterday at the United Nations would help prevent the credit crisis from slowing efforts to curb poverty, hunger and disease.
``It was the broadest alliance ever assembled to fight a common goal, the war on poverty,'' Brown said at the end of a daylong UN conference. The UN said 21 nations and companies including Santa Clara, California-based computer chipmaker Intel Corp. and Oslo-based fertilizer producer Yara International ASA made donations.
The anti-poverty gathering, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, came amid the U.S. financial upheaval that has dominated speeches and meetings of the more than 100 world leaders who came to New York this week.

While the U.S. has come under attack for risking a possible global disruption in markets that would undermine growth in developing nations, Brown and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were among leaders who voiced support for a proposed $700 billion bailout plan.

``There is a shared idea to support the decision to intervene and bail out the system because these are extreme circumstances,'' Zapatero told reporters. ``If there is no bailout the crisis could become extremely serious.''

The pledges were ``all the more remarkable against the backdrop of the financial crisis,'' UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon said.

Development Goals

The UN's Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000, include halving poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality by two-thirds and providing primary school education for all children by 2015. Ban said this week that $72 billion a year was needed to put the UN on track to achieve the eight targets, and that none would be fully reached at the current pace.

``The summit has proven that there is a renewed appetite for the fight against poverty,'' the U.K.-based aid group Oxfam said in a statement.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick, noting that increases in food and fuel prices already have pushed 100 million people into poverty in the past year, told the conference he was concerned about the ``ripple effect of this most recent trauma.''

Zoellick said the Group of Eight industrialized nations, which includes the U.S. and Britain, were behind on their 2005 pledge at Gleneagles, Scotland, to double aid to developing nations to $50 billion a year.

Brown urged a series of interim steps toward UN development goals, such as training a million health workers and getting 24 million more children into school by 2010.

`Greatest Enemy'

``Some say this time of financial turbulence is the time to put our ambitions on hold, to cut back or postpone the dream of achieving'' the UN targets, ``but this would be the worst time to turn back,'' Brown said. ``Our greatest enemy is not war or inequality or any single ideology or a financial crisis, it is indifference.''

The pledges included $4.5 billion for education and $3 billion from the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a dozen other organizations to fight malaria.

The U.S. committed $61 million over five years to give small farmers in Africa and Asia high-quality seeds and planting equipment to increase their yields.

San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc., New York- based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp. and Stockholm-based Ericsson AB pledged money or resources.

``I was thrilled to see the people who came together around the milestone event,'' Gates said during a press conference at the end of the day. ``This will make it easier for political leaders to allocate resources.''

Gates used his earlier speech to world leaders to praise the attention the UN goals have brought to issues to which his foundation has committed $17 billion since 2000.

He urged new government-private sector partnerships to develop scientific innovations to reduce poverty, such as drought-resistant maize, new vaccines for livestock and synthetic drugs.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

UNITED NATIONS -- Bill Gates said Thursday the U.N.'s goals to fight poverty have grabbed the world's attention - and the U.N. chief said the world has responded with more than $16 billion despite the current financial crisis.

"This has exceeded all our expectations," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the end of a day-long event to generate fresh political and financial support to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015.

At the event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Ban said around $16 billion in pledges were announced, but an exact accounting needs to be made.

"If so, that expression of global commitment would be all the more remarkable because it comes against a backdrop of financial crisis," Ban said.

Ban, Gates and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown praised the broad coalition of government leaders, business executives, philanthropists, civil society and nongovernmental organizations that made commitments to achieving the U.N. goals, which were adopted by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in September 2000.

"This is the broadest-ever alliance assembled to fight for a common goal - the war on poverty - and we are going to make the greatest endeavor in pursuit of the boldest and noblest of causes ... to end the poverty emergency," Brown said.

Ban called the global partnership "the way of the future."

Gates said partnership is critical because "the world understands that no sector acting alone can achieve the goals for humanity that are the mission of the United Nations."

"I love the Millennium Development Goals. They are one of the best ideas for fighting global poverty I've seen in my lifetime," he said in a speech before nearly 100 world leaders. "With all the mountains of measures and studies and reports in the world - the Millennium Development Goals have broken through and grabbed our attention."

The successes in reaching the goals should be celebrated, and the disappointing progress in some areas should be acknowledged and decisions should be made on what to do next, the Microsoft founder said.

"So I disagree with those who focus only on the disappointments and try to spread around blame and guilt," Gates said. "People aren't motivated by blame and guilt. People are motivated by success. And we have phenomenal opportunities for success."

A coalition of governments, charities and U.N. agencies pledged $4.5 billion - the biggest commitment - to get all the world's children in school by 2015.

Rock stars and humanitarians Bono and Bob Geldof also pledged to do their part by opening two new teacher training colleges in Malawi and Rwanda.

The second largest pledge - nearly $3 billion - came from nations, private donors and non-governmental organizations to virtually eliminate malaria as a mass child killer by 2015.

Among the other pledges were $1 billion to save the lives of 10 million mothers and children by the year 2015, $1 billion from Norway to fight deforestation in the Amazon, and an additional $730 million from the European Commission to the U.N. World Food Program during 2009-2012 to fight poverty.

China pledged to double the number of agricultural technicians it sends to developing countries and to train 10,000 doctors and nurses, and Pakistan said it would provide $21 a month to 3.4 million low-income households under a program named in honor of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Britain's Brown said the $16 billion in pledges is "a demonstration to the world that in the face of economic challenges we must do more and not less to help the poorest in the world."

But earlier Thursday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters the global financial crisis is making many of the U.N. goals unrealistic. "To talk about development, or to talk about the millenium goals, in the middle of such a crisis, this is sort of unfair - a difficult-to-accept position," he said.

American economist Jeffrey Sachs, the head of Columbia University's Earth Institute and director of the U.N. Millennium Project, said it was "preposterous" to use the financial crisis as an excuse not to support the U.N. goals, which include cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education and halting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, all by 2015.

Asking developed nations to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national product to fight hunger, disease and poverty is a small amount of money for a rich world, he said.

"Wall Street paid itself more in bonuses every year in recent years than the whole world gave in aid to Africa," Sachs told a news conference. "So let's be clear that it's preposterous to claim that now is not the time" to help bring hundreds of millions out of poverty and create a safer world.

Gates said he is convinced that progress on the goals "will help fuel the broad-based economic growth that leaders seek for their countries."

"This is an important reason why they should have the strong support of governments," he said.

Major New Commitments to Fight Poverty Announced at UN High-Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals

 NEW YORK, USA, September 26, 2008/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Governments, foundations, businesses and civil society organizations announced significant new commitments to meet the Millennium Development Goals, as part of the High-level Event on the MDGs held today at United Nations Headquarters.
Major commitments—including more than $4.5 billion for education and $3 billion for malaria –were announced by major donor countries and partners. Developing countries also announced commitments to mobilize domestic programmes aimed at achieving the universally agreed anti-poverty goals by the target date of 2015.

The following are highlights of the commitments made, based on information available as of mid-afternoon today. A complete compilation, when available, will be posted on the High-level Event website, ww.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel.

Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

· Launch of the "Class of 2015″ Partnership to get 24 million children into school by 2010 as a milestone towards universal primary education by 2015—$4.5 billion in new pledges and commitments, including: $3 billion from the World Bank to support education in 30 countries, $500 million from Saudi Arabia, $500 million from Australia, $255 million from Spain and $80 million from Norway, $92 million from the United Kingdom for the Education Fast-Track Initiative, as part of commitment to give almost $16 billion over ten years for education. Participants include: the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Vatican, EC, World Bank, UNESCO, Arab Fund, Cisco, Intel, Action Aid, Dubai Cares, Khalifa Foundation, Oxfam Novib, Save the children, Education International, GCE, Queen Rania of Jordan, Comic Relief, Anglican Church, Holy See, Jewish Council of Public Affairs, World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists.

· The European Union set out commitments in its "Agenda for Action" to increase support to education by $6.3 billion (€4.3 billion) by 2010.

· Japan committed to build 1,000 schools in Africa, with approximately 5,500 classrooms.

By Roshni Karwal

NEW YORK, USA, 26 September 2008 – Devli Kumari, now 11, came a long way from a stone quarry in India, where she grew up as a child labourer, to United Nations headquarters in New York, where she spoke at the launch of an ‘Education for All’ campaign during the General Assembly session this week.

Devli told her story yesterday to a rapt audience that included UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman, pop stars Bono and Bob Geldof, and other dignitaries attending the high-level event.

Together with her family, Devli said, she worked for many gruelling hours under harsh conditions every day. She was often beaten and received no access to education.

“I didn’t know what else was in the world,” she recalled. “I had never even seen paper until I was rescued four years ago, and it was then I first went to school. Now, I want to be able to read and write. I want to be a teacher when I grow up.”

Renewed funding commitments

© UNICEF/2008/Markisz

H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan greets Australian PM Kevin Rudd as UK PM Gordon Brown looks on at the ‘Education for All’ event. At left: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso and Global Campaign for Education President Kailash Satyarthi.

Devli may well achieve her teaching dream. As she spoke, a group of government and private-sector partners were making a pledge of $4.5 billion to help educate some 15 million children worldwide over the next three years. The partners are participants in, ‘Education for All: Class of 2015’, the campaign launched during yesterday’s event.
The pledge came from corporations such as Intel, Microsoft and Cisco, civic and sports associations such as FIFA, charities, faith groups and the Governments of Australia, France, Norway, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

“I have had the privilege of visiting so many countries, where in very place I have seen the case for education – not just as a matter of social justice and not just as an economic necessity, but as the right that every child should have as a human being,” said Mr. Brown.

‘We cannot afford to fail’

At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders pledged to ensure universal primary education by 2015. But eight years later, the world as a whole is not on track to achieve this Millennium Development Goal.

© UNICEF video

UNICEF Executive Director Ann. M. Veneman attends the 'Education for All: Class of 2015' campaign launch at UN headquarters, held as part of the 63rd General Assembly in New York.

Among the remaining challenges: Some 75 million children are still not enrolled in primary school; over a third of students who are enrolled drop out before completing their primary education; and there is a global shortage of teachers.

Education leaders agree that the goal is achievable, but much more needs to be done to reach the MDG target.

“Schools don’t just build lives, they save lives,” said Queen Rania. “Our deadline of 2015 is feasible. It is also indispensable and also non-negotiable. It is a test we cannot afford to fail.”

Commitment to education

UNICEF, one of the five agencies convening the ‘Education for All’ campaign, has steadily increased its commitment to this goal in recent years.

© UNICEF/2008/Markisz

Musician-activists Bono and Bob Geldof lend their support to the ‘Education for All’ campaign launch.

 UNICEF’s programmes focus on ensuring the right to quality education for all girls and boys, eliminating gender disparities in education, restoring learning in emergency situations and helping to rebuild education systems in post-crisis transition countries.

“We have to build on this momentum, on the conviction that education can drive economic and social progress,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement presented at the ‘Education for All’ event. “With an education, people flourish. Without, they remain trapped in poverty.”

Earlier in the day, UNICEF’s Executive Director attended another high-level event – this one addressing the global malaria crisis. With support from UNICEF, she noted, 15 countries across sub-Saharan Africa have shown at least a five-fold increase in bed net coverage since 2000. At the same event, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $168 million to develop next-generation malaria vaccines. The World Bank also committed $1 billion to boost the fight against malaria.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP)

A UN summit called to rev up the war on global poverty raised a total of roughly 16 billion dollars, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said here.

"We have full commitment from many countries in pledges to help the world's poor, around the 16 billion dollars mark," he told reporters Thursday at the close of the day-long summit called to review implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

He said the exact total from pledges from world leaders, the private sector and civil society still had be tallied, but noted that "that expression of global commitment would be all the more remarkable because it comes against a backdrop of financial crisis."

"This is exactly the kind of broad, global coalition we need to reach all of our Millenium Development Goals," Ban said.

The gathering was called to galvanize world support to ensure that eight poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders in 2000 are met by all countries by 2015. Africa is lagging the rest of the world in meeting the ambitious goals.

The MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.

Major commitments were announced Thursday in four key areas: malaria control, education, health and food security.

On the malaria front, participants committed around three billions dollars for a program to save more than 4.2 million lives between 2008 and 2015.

Malaria affects half of the world's population -- 3.3 billion people in 109 countries -- and causes nearly one million deaths per year, according to UN officials.

The malaria funding includes 1.1 billion dollars from the World Bank and 1.62 billion over two years from the Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- an international partnership of government, private sector and non-governmental organizations.

Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also providing 168.7 million dollars to fund a Malaria Vaccine Initiative for research on a new generation of malaria vaccines.

On education, Ban said 4.5 billion dollars' worth of new pledges and commitments were made to get 24 million children into school by 2010, as a milestone toward universal primary education by 2015.

In the health sector, commitments totaling nearly two billion dollars next year and rising to seven billion by 2015 were made for the MDGs relating to child mortality and maternal health.

Ban said a Global Campaign for Health also aimed to mobilize an extra 30 billion dollars by 2015, including to train over one million health workers, saving 10 million lives by 2015.

The UN chief said 1.6 billion dollars was also pledged to boost food security, including a new initiative to help poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and central Ameria gain access to rich markets.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stressed the need to spark a green revolution in Africa as he outlined key goals to ensure implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

He urged world leaders and top figures of the private sector and civil society "to invest ten billions in Africa so it can help feed not just Africa, but feed beyond Africa with its exports."

"In the past, feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa," the British leader said. "In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao, for his part, urged rich countries to double donations to the UN World Food Program over the next five years and to do more to cancel or reduce debt for poor countries.

And he said that to help achieve the MDGs, particularly in Africa, China planned to cancel outstanding interest-free loans extended to least developed countries that mature before the end of 2008, and give zero-tariff treatment to 95 percent of products from the least developed countries.

The summit took place amid heightened concern about the impact of the global financial crisis, with Ban warning that the current financial crisis "threatens the well-being of billions of people, none more so than the poorest of the poor."

"This only compounds the damage being caused by much higher prices for food and fuel," the UN chief added.

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he did not believe the financial turmoil would lead rich countries to abandon their commitments to the MDGs, as many African leaders fear.

And he said Berlin planned to boost its development aid next year by 1.2 billion dollars

Despite a massive financial crisis afflicting rich countries, a one-day UN development conference witnessed a strong outpouring of aid from leaders both public and private to help the world's poorest nations.

Major charitable foundations, government leaders and businesses of all stripes joined forces Thursday to push for progress in ending poverty, hunger and fighting diseases, and warned that the ongoing financial turmoil was no reason to bring those efforts to a halt.
The pledges totalled $16 billion (10.9 billion euros) according to an initial UN estimate, including more than $3 billion to eradicate malaria, $2 billion to tackle an ongoing food crisis and $4.5 billion for educational programs.

Nearly overshadowed by financial crisis

Fighting for money -- and headlines -- in light of the financial turmoil of the last few weeks, officials appeared happy with the outcome of the one-day talks.

The conference was held as the US Congress was stalled in talks over a massive $700-billion bailout of the US financial industry. Leaders in New York were hounded with questions about the crisis at nearly every aid initiative that was launched.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the aid offers "exceeded our most optimistic expectations" and were a sign of "global partnership in action."

The new pledges were "all the more remarkable because it comes against the backdrop of a global financial crisis," he added.

Nearly 80 world leaders attended the one-day session to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of ambitious UN targets aimed at improving the plight of the world's poorest by 2015.

One step closer to eradicating poverty

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has spearheaded efforts to boost global aid, called it "the broadest coalition ever assembled" to combat poverty. He said it would bring the world far closer to achieving the UN's targets.

Many leaders talked up the economic linkages between the world's industrial nations and its poorest in an effort to attract more development aid. Developing countries touted their own ongoing crisis, a surge in food and energy prices that has caused social unrest in dozens of nations.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe said that globalization meant "either shared prosperity ... or shared misery for the world."

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist from Colombia University, said it was "preposterous" that industrial nations could not afford to give 0.7 percent of their national budgets to development aid, whether in a time of "boom" or "bust."

Among the commitments made Thursday was a more than $3-billion initiative unveiled to eradicate malaria by 2015. The plan aims to save more than 4.2 million lives, mainly in Africa, which has suffered most from the disease.

A $4.5-billion education plan aims to bring 15 million children to school over the next three years and achieve universal primary education by 2015 -- one of seven Millenium Development Goals.

US billionaires open their wallets

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Howard G. Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose foundations provide hundreds of millions of dollars to global program fighting poverty and diseases, were present at the UN meetings to answer calls for generosity.

Gates said that the MDGs, for all their shortcomings, had been crucial in "raising the visibility of the suffering faced by the world's poorest people" and said he was encouraged by some of the innovative ideas coming out of the process.

The billionaires offered $76 million dollars to the World Food Program to assist some 350,000 farmers in 21 developing countries over the next five years. The United States committed $61 million dollars to a similar program.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that development should be the top priority of all governments. He announced new debt-forgiveness plans and pledged $30 million dollars and 1,000 experts to help poorer countries grow their own food.

The European Union offered an additional $730 million over the next three years to help address a surge in food prices. Other commitments involved addressing climate change and promoting gender equality.

But Brown and others warned that despite some progress being made on education and combatting diseases like AIDS and malaria, many of the UN's targets were still falling flat.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said he had "hardly seen any progress at all" on cutting maternal mortality rates. Norway, Britain, the World Bank and World Health Organization created a health taskforce to free up $2.4 billion by 2009 and $7 billion by 2015.

www.dw-world.de

 BONO: We wouldn't be asking for that kind of money. These are serious matters, people have lost their jobs. But I think the bill for the whole world -- so America would be like a third of it -- for $25 billion you could absolutely change the world. You could put kids in school, most kids in school. You could eradicate diseases like malaria, as we're saying. We could change the water supplies. But what's important is that people who want to change the world, want to see their country, they see it as a patriotic act to show the world innovation of America, technology of America, pharmacology of America.

ROBERTS: For $25 billion, you could put every kid who's out of school in the world into school? That seems like a lot of people for $25 billion. Pretty good return on your investment.
BONO: It's a great return on investment. You heard me on your program before talking about debt cancellation. Strangely Americans don't know that because of debt cancellation there are already an extra 29 million African children in school. That's incredible. Because people got out on the streets on the (RED) campaign and stuff like that, there's now 2.5 million Africans on AIDS drugs, which are expensive. So your country is turning for me in the right direction on these issues.

A group of governments, charities and U.N. agencies pledged $4.5 billion on Thursday in a bid to get all the world's children in school by 2015.

Those present included British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Australian Prime Minister Mark Rudd, Jordan's Queen Rania, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick and former child laborers.

The event was meant to boost the effort to eradicate illiteracy and provide universal primary schooling by 2015.

"Educating our children is not just about imposing a body of knowledge on them. Rather, it involves preparing children from the early years for the world in which they will come of age. It means instilling a love for lifelong learning, creativity, self-expression and an appreciation for diversity" Queen Rania said.

Archbishop of York - Calls for Joint Action to Achieve "Education For

All" at UN Emergency Summit

http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2008/9/26/ACNS4528

The Archbishop of York launched the "Education For All" initiative during a session of the UN's emergency summit on Millennium Development Goals yesterday.

Speaking in New York alongside Gordon Brown and Former US President Bill Clinton, Dr. Sentamu said: "We are half way to the 2015 MDG targets and yet 75 million children remain out of school completely. Twice as many, mostly girls, go for a short while but then drop out. We may think we are making progress on education but the facts are that too many children around the world are receiving inadequate education and in many cases, no education at all....This is a scandal for many reasons. If we do not educate our children, what hope can there be for the future? But it is also a scandal because it shows just how wrong our priorities have become."

The "Education For All" initiative is part of the Global Campaign for Education which seeks to provide free, compulsory public education, and to meet the third of the Millennium Development Goals: universal primary education.

Highlighting the urgent need for action the Archbishop said: "As citizens, and as children of God, we need to build a society where each individual can flourish and become the whole person they were created to be. Education is part of that transformative process for us to become fully human. ...Education is about finding out who we are, where we belong, and what the purpose of our lives is. It is not just about acquiring knowledge and skills - the root of 'education' is 'educare' which means to 'draw out'. We need to draw out from every person in every country, the gifts and potential they possess. As Christians, as educators, as human beings, our calling is to help others to attain their full humanity - not to beat them in the race but to share with them the prize."

Dr. Sentamu also highlighted the work of the Edith Jackson Trust, one of the charities for which he is patron, and of their work to build primary schools in Southern Sudan:

"Southern Sudan has the lowest access to education than any other country in the world, with only 20% of children enrolling at primary school and less than 2% completing primary education. For girls, this figure is less than 1%. As a result 92% of southern Sudanese women and 80% of men are illiterate....Girls in southern Sudan are more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than complete primary education.

"Today we need to remember that we who have received the benefits of education have a responsibility to those who went before and those who come after us. That responsibility is to pass on the learning and discernment and wisdom, and to ensure all children are able to receive the benefits of that education."

New York - Governments and private-sector groups announced Thursday pledges of 4.5 billion dollars to bring 15 million children to school over the next three years, dubbing the programme "Class of 2015: Education for All."British Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the campaign that included a line up of supportive governments, faith groups, non-governmental organizations and education advocates.

"I am proud today to help launch the Class of 2015 - uniting governments, faith groups, the private sector, civil society organizations and football as never before," Brown said at UN headquarters in New York during a one-day review of progress made on carrying out the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Universal primary education for all children by 2015 is one of the eight goals. The others deal with eradicating poverty and hunger, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, ending maternal and child mortality and achieving gender equality.

The UN said eight years after launching the MDGs that the education goal has been missed at mid-range toward 2015, particularly in gender parity. Education experts, borrowing the usual UN language, said the goal can be reached by 2015, but much more remained to be done.

Kailash Satyarthi, president of the Global Campaign for Education, said 16 billion dollars would be needed each year in order to achieve education for all children by 2015.

"Children are waiting at the school gates, despite repeated promises from the international community," Satyarthi said.

The UN said 41 million more children have attended school since the MDGs were launched in 2000, but 75 million other children of primary school age are still not in school, and many of them are working in factories and farms.

The World Bank's President Robert Zoellick said his organization planned to spend 1.5 billion dollars per year for education through the International Development Association, in 2008 and 2009.

The new funds will assist governments in more than 30 countries to reduce the number children still out of school children globally by at least 3.5 million per year and improve school quality and learning for more than 150 million children each year.

World Leaders, Fifa, Corporations, Faith Leaders And Education ...Advocates Join to Launch “class of 2015″

The “Class of 2015: Education for All” launched a new effort to build the political will to achieve education goals and remind world leaders of their promise that every child will get the opportunity of an education by 2015. A remarkable line up of supportive governments, faith groups, NGOs, sports, private sector organizations and education advocates registered their commitment to action on education, announcing pledges of $4.5 billion towards the achievement of education for all, over the next three years - two-thirds of this for basic education. When delivered, this money will be enough to educate 15 million children, including those struggling to stay in school as well as new entrants.

“I am proud today to help launch the Class of 2015 - uniting governments, faith groups, the private sector, civil society organizations and football as never before,” said UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “As part of the UK’s commitment to spend £8.5 billion on education in the 10 years to 2015, I can announce today a further contribution of £50 million to the Education For All Fast Track Initiative and £5million to match funds raised by Comic Relief with UK schools. Together we can help make education for all a reality for the 75 million children out of school.”

Joining together at the United Nations High Level Event on the MDGs, the “Class of 2015″ pledged to provide global leadership in the fight to fully fund and achieve the education goals. In 2000, world leaders pledged to ensure that by 2015, there would be Education for All. Eight years later, the MDG of gender parity in education has already been missed and the world is far off track for making the other education goals a reality. Experts agree that the goals are achievable-but much more needs to be done.

“Children are waiting at the school gates, despite repeated promises from the international community. G8 countries and other donor nations are behind on their commitments and today is a rallying call to work together to address the gaps,” said Kailash Satyarthi, President of the Global Campaign for Education. “$16 billion per year must be committed and mobilized in a predictable way by 2015 to achieve education for all. The pledges made today, if delivered, will make an immediate impact in developing countries and build the political will in donor countries to make good on promises for funding.”

Since 2000, increased funding has yielded results with 41 million more children in school, yet 75 million children of primary school age are still not in school, with many of them working in factories, on farms or caring for their sick parents instead. For those fortunate enough to make it to school, millions struggle to learn, as they share teachers with up to 100 other students, have few or no textbooks and receive only a few hours teaching a day. As generations before them also failed to have the chance at school, today 774 million adults are unable to read and write. By working together at key moments and mobilizing people in developed and developing countries, the “Class of 2015″ will work to help achieve the education goals and ensure that every child has a chance to go to school.

FIFA announced a new commitment to mobilize support from millions of World Cup fans with its “Football for Hope” movement. “Together we can make universal education in Africa a reality and raise awareness on the challenges and needs of the continent, not only in the lead-up, but long after the final whistle of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa,” said Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA. “We call on all governments to be accountable for their promises on education and every sector of society should also join in and concretely contribute.”

“Next year on behalf of the school children of the UK, Comic Relief will commit to spending £5 million, including the money raised by the school community, on projects across Africa helping the hardest to reach children get an education, with the British government matching that money for a total of £10 million,” said Kevin Cahill, Chief Executive of Comic Relief. “Through its innovative Schools Choose program, we will help UK school children understand the barriers faced by children across Africa in getting a good education, with the schools that get involved helping determine which particular work they would like their money to contribute to.”

Prime Minister Brown, President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and Satyarthi were joined by President H.E. Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura, as well as private sector leaders John Chambers, CEO of CISCO, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu and representatives and leaders from civil society including Action Aid, Comic Relief, Education International, FAWE, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision.

“Teachers are the foundation of Education For All,” said Assibi Napoe, Chair of the Global Campaign for Education. “18 million new teachers are needed between now and 2015 to guarantee that each classroom has a qualified teacher and many happy, healthy children.”

Education is a critical piece of the development puzzle. For an individual, education can offer a pathway to escaping from poverty, to finding a good job, and to becoming an active and valuable contributor to the social and economic health of our communities. For a country, expanding good quality education for all is a big contributor to economic growth.

“To help meet the serious challenges that remain, the World Bank is projecting a target of $1.5 billion per year for education through the International Development Association, in 2008 and 2009, subject to country needs,” said World Bank President Robert Zoellick. These funds will help governments in over 30 countries achieve quantitative targets such as reducing the number of out of school children globally by at least 3.5 million per year, and improving school quality and learning for over 150 million children each year.”

Momentum is growing and supportive governments and organizations are leading the charge. Countries such as the Netherlands and Norway have been at the forefront of the effort for a number of years and the UK has recently taken a leadership position by giving long-term predictable aid to enable the world’s poorest countries recruit more teachers, build new classrooms and provide basic materials like books and stationery. Earlier this year, France and Britain also each agreed to commit to supporting eight million children in school in Africa by 2010. In June, the EU committed to a plan with an ambition of increasing aid to education to $4.3 billion per year by 2010, which would almost double the money currently available to ensure universal primary education.



Today’s event included the following key commitments

* Bilateral and multilateral pledges of $4.5 billion over the next three years

* FIFA announcement that a lasting legacy of the 2010 World Cup will be helping get all children in school in Africa and to mobilize support from an estimated 30 million fans

*The Global Campaign for Education committed to mobilize 20 million people to campaign on Education For All

“The current economic slowdown and financial crisis cannot be a pretext for reneging on the fight against poverty,” said UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura. “Today must go down as a day of real commitment for the education of the world’s children.”

“Significant progress can be made towards the Education For All goals over the next 7 years if those working towards these goals combine efforts to see the universal right to quality education realized,” said David Archer, Head of Education for Action Aid International. “As we reach the half way point, GCE welcomes the reaffirmations of this commitment and the new promises to ensure that Education for All by 2015 moves from being a slogan to a reality.

“However governments have to be the prime players in this effort and it will only happen if they follow through on the promises they have made. GCE urges that today’s commitments are followed by action to ensure that today is not just a day of hollow promises but a day that truly marks the next push towards achieving the education goals of 2015.”

The Global Campaign for Education, founded in 1999, brings together major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and teachers’ unions in more than 120 countries. GCE promotes access to education as a basic human right and raises public awareness to create the political will for governments and other leaders in the international community to fulfill their promises to provide at least a free, public basic education for all children. http://www.campaignforeducation.org

UN General Assembly to call for recommitment to MDGs”

Episcopalians, Anglicans join in advocacy efforts September 25 By Mary Frances Schjonberg, September 24, 2008

The United Nations General Assembly on September 25 will call upon world leaders to renew efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for social progress by 2015.
Episcopalians and Anglicans from across the world are in New York City to participate in advocacy events surrounding the General Assembly session, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams issued a call September 24 for a renewed commitment to the MDGs.
Meanwhile, in fulfillment of the recent Lambeth Conference's call, the Episcopal Church has designated September 25 as a day of prayer, fasting and witness. Liturgical and other resources are available here and here.
In Ottawa, Anglican Church of Canada Archbishop Fred Hiltz, and Bishop Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), will lead an ecumenical event, Walk of Witness -- Bringing it Home, to urge the Canadian government to fulfill its promise to end poverty, the Anglican Journal reported.
In a news release describing what is being called "the High-Level Event," the UN General Assembly noted that "at the halfway point towards the target date, significant progress has been made, but urgent and increased efforts are needed by all stakeholders in order to meet the goals by 2015."
"The High-level Event will be a forum for world leaders to review progress, identify gaps, and commit to concrete efforts, resources and mechanisms to bridge the gaps," the release said.
 
In a video message Williams backed calls for a renewal of the pledges made by the international community in 2000, and spoke of the need for the members of the Anglican Communion to work in harmony with governments and non-governmental organizations around the world in order to achieve the MDGs by 2015.
"Much of the work that's being done by the Anglican Church covers very comprehensively the Millennium Development Goals," Williams said in the video message. "We want to anchor that work in worldwide co-operation.  We want to do that work in synergy with those governments and NGOs who are working for the same end.  And we want to let governments and NGOs know that we are there and we are ready."
A transcript of Williams' message is available here.
The archbishop's message echoes a "manifesto" the Lambeth Conference of bishops presented to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown July 24 at the conclusion of the gathering's Walk of Witness in London. In that statement the bishops urged that:
 
"When they meet in New York at the United Nations on 25th September, world leaders must find greater political commitment to addressing poverty and inequality. A timetable for achieving the MDGs by 2015 needs to be created. Our leaders need to invest in and strengthen their partnership with the Church worldwide, so that its extensive delivery network for education and health care, alongside other faiths, is fully utilized in the eradication of extreme poverty."
 
The manifesto from the Lambeth Conference Walk of Witness can be found here.
 
A smaller Walk of Witness made up of Anglican Communion bishops and others will take place September 25 starting from the Episcopal Church Center in Manhattan and ending several blocks away at the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
At the UN building, Archbishop of York John Sentamu will be part of a panel presentation launching "Education for All: Class of 2015," an initiative of commitments to the second MDG of achieving universal primary education for all. A number of government officials and others including Brown and former U.S. President Bill Clinton will also participate.
Later in the day, there will be a "rally" and "teach-in" on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, followed by a "Service of Recommitment and Witness of the Achievement of the MDGs." Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will be the officiant and Sentamu will preach. There will be interfaith participation in the service.
At a reception following the service, government and church figures will highlight the role of faith groups in achieving the MDGs, according to new releases.
-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Episcopal Church governance, structure, and trends, as well as news of the dioceses of Province II. She is based in Neptune, New Jersey, and New York City.

The Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Koïchiro Matsuura, has hailed a 4.5 billion dollar commitment to Education for All made in New York today as a decisive step forward, but reminded that pledges and promises, past and present, must be kept.

Mr Matsuura was speaking at the launch of a new multi-stakeholder partnership by the Global Campaign for Education, a Non-Governmental Organization. The “Class for 2015: Education for All”, includes governments, charities, private sector companies, faith groups and the education advocates, who will build the political will to achieve education goals and remind world leaders of their promise to provide every child with access to education by 2015.

The event, held on the occasion of a High Level meeting organized by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to boost action to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, these stakeholders pledged 4.5 billion dollars to education over the next three years - two-thirds of this for basic education.

“Today must go down as a day of real commitment,” Mr Matsuura said, adding that “the current economic slowdown and financial crisis cannot be a pretext for reneging on the fight against poverty.”

Mr Matsuura called on developing country governments to “invest at least 20 percent of their national budgets on education”, and on donors “to respect their past pledges, to focus on countries most in need and to live up to the compact they made with developing countries in 2000.”

UNESCO is the global coordinator of efforts to achieve Education for All. The launch of the Class for 2015: Education for All and the pledges made there are “decisive steps forward that will reinforce our efforts and help to mobilize the support of decision makers everywhere,” Mr Matsuura said.

The upcoming High-Level Group meeting, organized by UNESCO and scheduled to take place in Oslo (Norway) in December, will provide the next opportunity for education leaders and donors to assess progress and consider the policies required to translate the financial commitment into programmes that support educational quality and equity.

Despite significant improvements in recent years, some 75 million children still have no access to education, and 774 million adults and young people still cannot read or write. UNESCO estimates that an extra seven billion dollars will be required annually to achieve Education for All in low income countries by 2015.

Leaders pledge to make education for all a reality

By Gabrielle Wade

Eight years after a pledge in 2000 for “Education for All” by 2015, 75 million children worldwide are still not enrolled in primary school. Although 41 million more children are in school since the initial pledge, world leaders along with various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) gathered at the United Nations Thursday to announce increased efforts to achieve the goal by its deadline of 2015.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at the launch, “On present rates of progress we will not meet [the goal] in 2015, or 2050, not even by 2100, and as I said this morning to the UN General Assembly itself, a century is too long for young people to wait, for the world to wait, for social justice, and that is why we must act.”

In this spirit, supporting governments, faith groups, NGOs, private sector organizations and education advocates announced pledges of $4.5 billion over the next three years for education, two-thirds of which will go to basic education. This is enough to educate 15 million additional children in the upcoming three years and make immediate impact in developing countries, but ultimately President of the Global Campaign for Education Kailash Satyarthi said, “$16 billion per year must be committed and mobilized in a predictable way by 2015 to achieve education for all.”

Regarding the pledges announced Thursday, Global Campaign for Education (GCE) Policy Advisor Lucia Fry told MediaGlobal, “Different pledges targeted different programs and initiatives according to the preference of the donors. The Education for All Fast Track Initiative Catalytic Fund will receive $450 million from a variety of donors. Norway is contributing $180 million to girls’ education through UNICEF. The World Bank will increase financing through its International Development Association facility to reach $3 billion over 2008 and 2009,” and while some contributors did give to particular programs, “Saudia Arabia gave a commitment of $500 million without specifying the initiative or countries to receive it.”

These are just a few of the many donors and participants in the “Class of 2015.” Participants also include groups such as Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA), which will use its “Football for Hope” movement to assemble support from approximately 30 million World Cup fans, and Comic Relief, an organization whose goal is to “use comedy and laughter to raise money and change lives,” according to their Web site.

Adding to money raised by Comic Relief, Brown said, “We are going to make sure that every penny that is given to Comic Relief for education in Africa over the next year will be matched pound for pound by our government.”

As a promoter of access to education as a basic human right, GCE committed to mobilize 20 million people to campaign for Education for All, but Head of Education for Action Aid International David Archer urged, “Governments have to be the prime players in this effort, and it will only happen if they follow through on the promises they have made. GCE urges that today’s commitments are followed by action to ensure that today is not just a day of hollow promises but a day that truly marks the next push towards achieving the education goals of 2015.”
To further inspire government leaders and organizations to attain their goal of Education for All, two former child laborers, Ablavi Agbodjan from Togo and Devli Kumari from India, spoke about the importance of education.

Agbodjan told the audience that she had to quit school at the age of 12 because she had to work to support her uncles, but she hopes to return to school and become a doctor.

Kumari told a different story; she was born in a stone quarry and she and her parents were forced to work from 4:00 am until 3:00 the next morning. Today, she is enrolled in school and hopes to become a teacher. At the opening of the meeting, she called upon attending officials by saying, “I went around in my village and enrolled 15 children into school. You being leaders, wouldn’t you be able to enroll all children in schools?”

To this question, Brown later said, “I have no doubt that we can prove the power of a generation working together to change the world, and what better way to change the world one child at a time than give every child the chance of education.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said if verified, the $16 billion figure ‘would be all the more remarkable because it comes against the backdrop of financial crisis.’ The meeting of governments, the private sector and development agencies sought to assess progress of universally agreed MDGs to halve global poverty by 2015 and identify next steps. …

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he worried the financial crisis could quickly spread to developing nations, already reeling from higher food and fuel prices. Developing country leaders expressed concern that the anti-poverty goals were beyond their reach, and urged wealthy nations to act firmly to ensure the crisis did not spread. …” [Reuters/Factiva]

AFP notes that “…The gathering was called to galvanize world support to ensure that eight poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders in 2000 are met by all countries by 2015. …Major commitments were announced Thursday in four key areas: malaria control, education, and health and food security. … In the health sector, commitments totaling nearly $2 billion next year and rising to $7 billion by 2015 were made for the MDGs relating to child mortality and maternal health. …” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

AP adds that “British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says his country will spend more than $800 million over the next three years as part of a wider initiative to reduce the number of newborns and mothers who die each year during childbirth. Brown made the announcement Thursday during the release of the first-year report on the Global Campaign for Health Millennium Development Goals. The report said that while progress has been made in some areas, hardly a dent has been made in reducing the number of mothers who die at a rate of about one-per-minute around the world during childbirth. …

Brown also announced the creation of a Task Force for Innovative International Finance for Health Systems that will report to the G8 summit next year and will develop recommendations on innovative financing to improve global health care. Brown will co-chair the task force together with World Bank President Robert Zoellick. …” [The Associated Press/Factiva]

Meanwhile, in a separate piece AP also notes that “…A coalition of governments, charities and UN agencies pledged $4.5 billion on Thursday in an effort to get all the world's children in school by 2015. A meeting - which included British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Australian Prime Minister Mark Rudd, Jordan's Queen Rania, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick and former child laborers - was meant to boost the effort to eradicate illiteracy and provide universal primary schooling by 2015. …

The donations were announced at Thursday's ‘Class of 2015: Education For All’ pledging summit, which has a goal of getting 75 million more children into school - and ending discrimination against girls, who are frequently the last to be sent to school and the first to be pulled out in much of the world. …” [The Associated Press/Factiva]

By Adrian Lovett, Save The Children, New York
Final day.  At 6.45am I leave our rented apartment, which after three days and nights of all-male living is very reminiscent of my first year in college.  I make a quick attempt to clear up - which involves moving the half-finished takeaway trays from the living room to the kitchen - and Ben and I head down the road to Kinko's copy shop to pick up some banners we've had produced for our event inside the UN today on child and maternal mortality. 

This is the big day of the week.

Prime Ministers and Presidents are on a sort of conveyor belt of pledge-making.  They shuffle from one 'side-event' to another, go in, make a speech, make a pledge, move on.  You have to be paying attention to catch them all.  (Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game could help here. "You have sixty seconds to remember as many of the pledges you've just heard as possible.  All the ones you can remember, you get to keep. Ready? Go."  "Um... $450 million from Australia for education.  20 million anti-malarial bed nets from Britain.  $1.2 billion World Bank money for vaccine boosters. Err... Australia $450 million - " "No, no, you've already had that one! Come on!  Set of saucepans from the Canadian government...") (one of those pledges I made up.)

A couple of moments stand out.  The 'In My Name' event with the new campaign song from will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas works beautifully. Save the Children, Oxfam, Comic Relief and others get this new call on world leaders to keep their promises up and running with a great event in the plaza outside the UN.  The event is supposed to be a no-politician zone, and it's going really well until the president of Benin turns up with entourage, unannounced and uninvited, to have his photo taken with the brilliant African singer Angelique Kidjo, who is the best known and most popular citizen of Benin on the planet. Politicians and celebrities - it works the same everywhere in the world. 

Later at the Global Campaign for Education's "Class of 2015" event, there's an amazing turnout, and looking around the room I feel quite moved to see so many campaigners I worked with on Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History, all now doing different things in organisations like mine and a few in governments, but most still feeling like they're working for the same cause.  Really this is the campaigning Class of 2000. 

The event runs on and on as more and more people want to make their commitments.  My boss Jasmine makes the case for children who are least likely to get an education, those in conflict-affected countries.  These children are caught between two prejudices - one from some in the humanitarian community who say education can't be delivered when the priority is emergency sanitation and so on, and the other from some in the education business who say conflict-affected countries are not their 'patch' and its just too difficult to work in them.  The combination of those two complacent assumptions means that 37 million children have no chance of getting into school.  Yet Save the Children is showing how it can be done - we're getting children into good-quality education at a rate equivalent to two whole new schools every single day - and through our Rewrite the Future campaign we're urging others to do much more for those children.

Lots of talk about what today's pledges all add up to.  Government people are saying they are worth $11 billion altogether, though later that gets revised up to around $16 billion.  But is it 'new money'? Past experience makes us wary on this.  The numbers are still being worked over but it looks like there are three types of pledges that have been made here.  There's a small-ish part that is genuinely brand new, like the commitments from some of the Gulf states, which hasn't been seen in any aid figures before.  Then there's another small-ish part that really isn't new at all - leaders have just come along and repeated things they've previously announced.  And then there's the remainder, the big bit in the middle - pledges that are about turning previously announced plans for overall aid levels into specific commitments to certain projects.  So for example, the $270 million for education from the Spanish government will use money from their overall aid spending plans that have already been announced.  But what is new is the knowledge that this amount will be spent on getting children a good education - not on other things that might be less worthwhile...

As the education meeting finally wraps up we try to get a sense of our overall verdict on the day and give our reaction.  The idea for this whole meeting came more than a year ago when various people were trying to figure how we could break out of the 'nothing but G8' annual cycle on global poverty.  We needed a moment that could bring more progressive forces to the table - a wider group of governments, non-government organisations, businesses, faith groups and others. Whether many of the governments here saw the rest of us as equal partners is doubtful - old habits die hard.  But I honestly believe the outcomes of the event exceeded our expectations. 

So much of campaigning is about keeping up momentum, not allowing the train to grind to a halt.  This week (at the risk of mixing my metaphors) has seen a critical injection of new life into the campaign to overcome global poverty and save children's lives.  Now of course, we have to keep going - insisting governments deliver on the pledges they made here and the ones they made before, pushing business to play their part, challenging ourselves to do more.  It isn't going to be easy to meet the 2015 development targets, but this week has helped to give us a fighting chance.  And all of this against the backdrop of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which risked diverting our agenda entirely.  At least that demonstrated that when world leaders want to act decisively and radically in an emergency, they can and do.  We're saving the bankers.  Now let's save the children.

Just before getting on the plane home I'm told that I was standing in the wrong place at the In My Name event, just as Bono was adding his name to the perspex wall, and the photos show me lurking behind the plastic, right in the middle of the picture.  Oops.  Now me and the President of Benin both have a photo to take home and show the kids.

By Larry Elliott and Patrick Wintour

Gordon Brown will today launch a global plan to recruit a million doctors, nurses and midwives in poor countries as an emergency session of the UN in New York seeks to make up lost ground in the effort to reach its millennium development goals.

Despite fears that the deepening global financial crisis will deflect the west from the fight against poverty, the prime minister will call for rich countries to stick by their aid pledges and will announce an international taskforce aimed at mobilising money to tackle maternal mortality.

The prime minister, who will co-chair the taskforce with the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said last night: "It is unacceptable that one woman dies every minute in childbirth. Almost all these deaths are preventable. We urgently need to mobilise the resources to recruit the nurses, midwives and doctors to stop this tragedy."

After pressure from Britain, the UN agreed to set aside today for a session designed to speed up progress in achieving the eight millennium goals, including universal primary education, a two-thirds decline in infant mortality, and a 50% drop in the numbers of people living below the dollar-a-day poverty line.

The goals are supposed to be achieved by 2015. But on present trends, the UN may fail to meet any of its targets. Least progress has been made in achieving a 75% cut in the number of women dying in pregnancy or childbirth, from the current level of more than 500,000 deaths a year.

The taskforce will report to next year's G8 summit in Italy with proposals on how to raise funds to employ more health workers. These plans will include Brown's international finance facility, a means of front-loading through sales of government bonds, and ideas floated by European governments such as an airline tax and levy on international currency transactions.

Today's meeting will also see Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, pledge extra money to a $3bn (pounds 1.62bn) fund for the eradication of malaria. The UN will say the extra cash should make it possible to prevent any deaths from malaria by 2015.

For education, there will be $3bn pledged to help 10 million children attend school, and Downing Street sources said there was likely to be a commitment from Fifa, the world governing body of football, to make primary school enrolment for sub-Saharan Africa one of the legacies of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Kevin Watkins, director of the global monitoring report at Unesco, said there was an urgent need for education spending. "This is one of those areas where the window of opportunity for success on the millennium goals is closing fast, because universal education by 2015 means getting everyone in school by about 2010 - and schools have to be built and teachers trained.

"There are now 75 million out of school, and our projections show we are unlikely to get much beyond halving this figure by 2015. We also estimate that around 3.6 million new teachers will have to be recruited in sub-Saharan Africa alone."

Brown flew from his successful party conference in Manchester direct to New York for the UN general assembly meeting, which was convened especially to discuss how to put more money into the stalling anti-poverty drive.

The prime minister told the Guardian: "There are 100 million people facing famine, 17 million kids don't go to school, 10 million children die unnecessarily from diseases we could cure and, tragically, half a million women are dying avoidably in childbirth every year."

Despite the global downturn, governments in the west could not afford to cut back on their development aid budgets. "What we are saying," Brown added, "is everyone has a contribution to make to reaching the millennium development goals, but at the moment people will say 'we've got a global economic problem, we should cut aid'. But with global food prices going up, we've got to increase food production in Africa if we are going to solve the problem."

The shadow international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said: "We've had enough global jamborees and talking. The clock is ticking and we're miles off track to achieving these goals. Governments around the world must get their act together - a real focus on outputs, not inputs, fewer, better coordinated aid agencies, rigorous independent aid evaluation, and a renewed emphasis on the very poorest countries and the poorest people. What we need to see in New York this week is less hot air and more action."

Brown was due to meet the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, last night, and hold a breakfast meeting with fund managers before making a speech on the financial crisis tomorrow, which will stress the need for greater transparency by banks.

Sarah Montague, presenter: Bob Geldof has been meeting many of the world leaders who’ve been in New York to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals, the eight different goals for improving poverty, health and education in developing countries by 2015.  I spoke to him, and I asked him how we were doing and what progress had been made.

Bob Geldof, anti-poverty campaigner: We’re not doing too badly.  One or two countries may achieve all the Millennium Development Goals, in Africa, and a lot of the countries will achieve some of the Millennium Development Goals.  There are eight, and some are doing better than others, because of where they are economically, et cetera, or politically.  This week was really about trying to re-motivate a lot of countries – not the African ones, but the, you know, the partner countries – and focus them more on the changed world and what needs to be done now.  The upside of that is that that kind of worked, I must say, being a sort of, a bit of a sceptic about all of this, but it did sort of work.  The Qataris, for example, for the first time for a Middle Eastern state, today announced that they would go to 0.7, which is of course what’s required of GDP by 2015 to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.  That’s big news.  So these guys are beginning to come onboard, which leavens the burden a bit.

SM: What is it that needs to be done now?  Does it just come down to resources, to money?

BG: You know, we won’t do anything unless there’s a hard focus, and one of the things that’s happened – it’s a bizarre phenomenon of all the stuff that’s going on in the world – is that Europe has got a billion euros extra, that it should really have spent on CAP, you know, which everyone in Britain agrees is a sort of economic illiteracy.  And our farmers have made quite a lot of money this year, but alternatively, those in the south can’t afford seed or fertiliser or oil to get stuff around, so they’re doing even worse.  But because the price have gone up for us, [sic] we’ve got a billion extra.  And Barroso of Europe made a suggestion that that billion should go down to the south, down into Africa, to the farmers there, to help through this.  That billion euros needs to be dispensed now.  So we’ve been really doing a lot of rounds, trying to get the rest of the Europeans behind this, and the holdouts at the moment seem to be Germany, for some bizarre reason, but we were with them yesterday and we may be making some progress.  So that’s tangible.  The second part was to get the new players involved, to get the Arab states and the Chinese involved in this stuff, and that’s beginning to take some shape.  So yeah, I mean, you know, we’re all very tired and stuff, but all in all, it was certainly worth it from our point of view.  And Gordon Brown, you know, I know all the stuff going on back home, but he was called today by one of the leaders “the conscience of the G8”.  You know – he just keeps on it, he just keeps on at them.  And they announced a big thing today for education.  Education is a wonder.  I mean in the last, since 2005, 40 million – 40 million – children have gone to school.   I mean I know it’s the early morning, Britain, I know you’re listening, and I’m late at night here.  But it is extraordinary: 40 million.  That’s ultimately what it’s about.  So, you know, not bad, not bad at all.

SM: You make reference to what is going on around you in New York, with the financial crisis and this $700 billion bailout plan for the banks…

BG: Yeah, yeah. 

SM: When you look at that, how does it make you feel, given the sums of money that are needed to deal with poverty?

BG: When $700 billion is needed, the argument is whether it should be spent at all, but it’s there and it’s available to be done, and you sort of look at that, and the tiny amount of funds that are necessary to resolve this issue.  And what it kind of demonstrates is the resilience of the poor on a daily basis, and for the rich, a sort of – and I don’t mean this in any snide way or with any guile – but for the rich it’s a sort of lesson in how fragile life is.  And I think it’s that fear that you can really tangibly feel permeating throughout the New York streets at the moment.

SM: Bob Geldof, many thanks.   

By Colum Lynch

Faced with a global financial crisis, foreign governments still mustered more than $16 billion in commitments to fund programs to eradicate poverty, fight infectious diseases and put millions of children through primary school, the United Nations announced Thursday.

But some foreign leaders and private groups cautioned that governments frequently fail to follow through on their promises and that much of the money pledged this week may be repackaged promises made in years past.

Still, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon characterized Thursday's poverty summit -- which brought more than 90 world leaders together with celebrities, business executives and philanthropists -- as a "very successful day."

The event, he said, "has exceeded our most optimistic expectations."

Ban convened the summit to build momentum for the international effort to meet a series of targets known as the Millennium Development Goals. They target hunger, malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases and include providing universal access to education for children by the year 2015.

Ban was joined at a closing news conference by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who helped plan the event, along with former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

Thursday's meeting unfolded as the Bush administration and Congress worked frantically to stem the financial crisis centered on Wall Street, just miles away from the U.N.'s midtown headquarters.

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the call for aid could not have come at a worse time and predicted that many governments are unlikely to make good on cash pledges to fight poverty. "We are lying," he told American reporters at a breakfast Thursday.

Asked if his government would pledge more aid today, Kouchner said, "No. For the time being, we are really restricted" in what can be given. He said it is extremely difficult to inject more money into development at a time when wealthy donors are facing the prospects of limited economic growth.

But Brown, who spent much of his day discussing the crisis with Wall Street executives, countered that: "This would be the worst time to turn back."

"Our greatest enemy is not war or inequality or any single ideology or a financial crisis, it is indifference," he said.

In 2002, governments agreed to commit 0.7 percent of their gross national income to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But only a handful of Northern European countries, including Denmark, Sweden and Norway, have lived up to those obligations.

Last year, donors spent about $103.7 billion in foreign assistance. Ban has asked states to give an additional $18 billion a year, including more than $6 billion a year for Africa.

Anti-poverty activists said that funding has been grossly inadequate to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But they said that Thursday's summit drew fresh attention and money to the problem.

"Given the financial environment, this is not bad at all," said Alison Woodhead, spokeswoman for the aid organization Oxfam International. "The summit has proven that there is a renewed appetite for the fight against poverty."

Woodhead said, however, that the world's failure to confront the global food crisis marred Thursday's event.

Ban said governments, foundations and businesses this week pledged more than $4.5 billion for education and about $3 billion for the fight against malaria.

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/21221

"...education for all is not just a moral right, an economic necessity, a matter of social justice, it is also a security issue and I hope the whole world will take on note..." said the Prime Minister in a recent speech on the Education Fund.

There is no more special reason why we should support Education for All than the testimonies we have had from Oblavi and Devli (phon), and I wish them well as they pursue from school their careers to be a doctor and a teacher, and I would like to make sure that that is possible and that their dreams can come true.

I believe that this is the widest coalition ever assembled to put pressure on the whole world to make sure that in our generation, for the first time ever in the history of the world, we can be able to say to each other that every child in every continent is able to go to school.   And I want to thank all those who have come together to make this possible, not just governments and international organisations, but business leaders, charities, faith organisations, civic and sporting organisations like FIFA who are involved in this as well, and I believe that together the funding commitments that are going to be announced this afternoon - commitments that have not been previously made before and show the historic significance of what we are doing - $4.5 billion is being pledged today, and that will make possible in itself education for 18 million children around the world.  So thank you all for what you have achieved.

I have had the privilege of visiting so many countries where in every place I have seen the case for education, not just as a matter of social justice, and not just as an economic necessity, but as the right that every child should have as a human being.

I went to Tanzania and I had 12 year old boys pressing me – why could we not go to school?  And unlike our countries where people are saying why do I have to go to school, they were saying we must go to school.  And then I went to Abuja in Nigeria and I saw another reason why we had to have children educated by funds that we can provide to make it possible.  In fact Bono, who is here and has done a wonderful job promoting education, I am proud of what he has done, but Bono and I were in a school just outside Abuja in Nigeria and we were asking the school pupils what they wanted to be – they wanted to be engineers, and doctors and nurses and all the things that in every country children who get long years of schooling are allowed to dream is possible.  None of them wanted to be a politician, none of them actually wanted to be pop singer, Bono, I know, but in that school with dilapidated roofs, where children 3 to a desk, some classrooms where there were no desks at all, the children were chanting the song – “Give us our Education”.  And I also saw the problem because they told us that up the road there was a Madrassa that had been created offering free education to children, in very good quality conditions, but of course the condition was that they were preached at with violent extremist ideology.

So education for all is not just a moral right, an economic necessity, a matter of social justice, it is also a security issue and I hope the whole world will take on note that if we don’t do what we should do to provide education for all, then other people will prosper by violent ideologies and extremism prospering in these parts of the world.
Now there are 77 million children still not at school today, and they have little hope of going to school any day unless we take the sort of action that we are taking today. But the blunt truth is that even with the successes we have had – 44 million children to school, and it is a marvellous success over the last few years, even with the announcements today, the fact is we will not meet that Millennium Development Goal that every child be at school in 2015 unless we change action.

On present rates of progress, we will not meet it in 2015, or 2050, not even by 2100. And as I said this morning to the UN General Assembly itself, a century is too long for young people to wait, for the world to wait, for social justice and that is why we must act.

So my message today is have confidence in what we can do together, have confidence that coming together today for this special summit, business, charitable groups, governments, international organisations, we have been able to show what can be done in one day.  Let us have confidence that we can move from here, country by country, organisation by organisation, and make real our commitment to achieve education for all by 2015.

We in Britain are going to work with Comic Relief, a great charitable organisation in our country, and we are going to make sure that every penny that is given to Comic Relief for education in Africa over the next year will be matched pound for pound by our government, and I am proud of what Comic Relief achieves in persuading young people to  take an interest in developing countries.
We are announcing today that we will make good the missing money in the fast track initiatives of the World Bank by providing 100 million for Bob Zoellick to continue the good work that the World Bank is doing.  And I want to repeat, finally, that we, the UK government, have a pledge that we will provide over ten years $15 billion for education to make our commitment to ensuring that every child in the world can go to school.  And if we can come together with other countries in the European Union and elsewhere, with the work that has been done by charitable and faith organisations, with this new great interest from the business community, some of whom have been doing it for many years, some who are now coming to help us for the first time, I have no doubt that we can prove the power of a generation working together to change the world, and what better way to change the world, one child at a time, than give every child the chance of education.

By Milton Olupot

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has complained that many children receive inadequate education and in many cases, no education at all.

He said it is a scandal that 75 million children do not go to school.

Sentamu was recently speaking in New York at the launch of the Education for All initiative during the UN’s emergency summit on Millennium Development Goals.

The initiative is part of the Global Campaign for Education seeking to provide free, compulsory public education.

’If we do not educate our children, what hope can there be for the future? This also shows how wrong our priorities have become,’ Sentamu said, according to a statement.

Highlighting the urgent need for action, Sentamu said: ’As citizens and as children of God, we need to build a society where each individual can flourish and become the person they were created to be. Education is part of that transformative process for us to become fully human.

’Education is about finding out who we are, where we belong and what the purpose of our lives is. It is not just about acquiring knowledge and skills.’

Sentamu also highlighted the work of the Edith Jackson Trust, one of the charities for which he is patron. The charity builds primary schools in southern Sudan.

With only 20% of the children enrolling in primary school and less than 2% completing primary education, Southern Sudan has the lowest access to education in the world.

By Wale Samuel

Heads of states and governments, a Saudi Prince and Jordanian Princess, two poor children from India and Togo, captains of industry, civil society leaders and top campaigners and two Pop Stars endured the chilly and windy weather and meandered through the tight security provided at the tall and imposing edifice, the United Nations building, to pledge their support to give education to 75 million out of school children as members of the class of 2015.

The event was the United Nations High level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) held in New York recently.
 Inspiring messages from FIFA President, Sepp Blatter delivered via satellite, as well as former President Bill Clinton and Presidential hopeful,Senator Barak Obama via a representative and e mail, respectively added pep to the Education for All (EFA) agenda.

The chilly weather did not stop UK Prime Minister,Gordon Brown, World Bank President , Robert  Zoellick and Princess Rania of Jordan, pop stars Bono and Bob Geldof, Prime Minister of Australia and EUs Barrosso to help launch the Class of 2015.

Also signing on to the EFA Class of 2015, put together by the Global Campaign on Education (GCE) were: Oxfam, Action Aid, GCAP, FAWE, Comic Relief, Educational International, ANCEFA represented by the National Moderator of Nigerias Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All (CSACEFA), Mrs. Felicia Onibon; World vision Australia, Canadian Teachers Federation and CSACEFA Nigeria, represented by its Policy Advisors.

In his opening remark, President of the GCE Kailash Satyarthi said $16 billion would be needed each year in order to achieve EFA by 2015. "Children are waiting at the school gates, despite repeated promises from the international community," he said, adding that urgent action was needed when viewed against the fact that education liberates, protects and empowers individuals to become members of the global community.

Kailash concluded by noting that the biggest scandal of the century is illiteracy and what is needed to end the scandal is global political will as he asked the G8 to increase funding to education.

An indigent girl from India in the full glare of international media created a riveting image as she urged world leaders to rescue all children trapped in the quarries of India and all others subjected to a life of hard labour without an education by enrolling them in schools.

 In his remark, the leader of the Class of 2015, Gordon Brown, who has been described  as the conscience of the G7 and the rest of the world because of his support for education declared: "I am proud today to help launch the Class of 2015 - uniting governments, faith groups, the private sector, civil society organisations and football as never before."

 Brown caught the attention of the gathering as he narrated his experience during a visit to Abuja, Nigeria, where pupils attending classes in dilapidated structures clamoured for quality education. He said he was convinced that education was a security issue and the lack of it could lead to violence and extremism. He also noted that at present rate the world cannot meet the EFA goals in 20100 adding that a century is too long to wait for social justice.

UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, who was represented by Director General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura said: with education people flourish and without it they remain trapped in poverty. Eight years after launching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Matsuura said the education goal had been missed at mid-range toward 2015, particularly in gender parity.

While noting that 41 million more children have attended school since the MDGs were launched in 2000, 75 million other children of primary school age are still not in school, and many of them are working in factories and farms. He said external aid to developing countries was $3.5 billion while the $11 billion was actually needed to fulfil EFA goals, leaving a gap of $7.5 billion.

Experts said the goal can be reached by 2015, but much more remained to be done even as only 8 countries in Africa are on track to meeting the EFA goals. They acknowledge the fact that 11 billion dollars per year would be needed to achieve the 6 goals of EFA.

Zoellick said his organisation planned to spend $1.5 billion per year for education through the International Development Association (IDA), in 2008 and 2009. The new funds would assist governments in more than 30 countries to reduce the number of children still out of school  globally by at least 3.5 million per year and improve school quality and learning for more than 150 million children each year. He reiterated the importance of school feeding especially with the high cost of food saying that quality education and not just numbers is the true driver of economic development.

 France declared its support for the EFA agenda to the tune of 50 million euro from 2008-2011 through the Fast Track Initiative (FTI). Executive Director of the FTI had warned that without the provision of long term and predictable financial assistance by donors the dream of achieving EFA could be in jeopardy.

US Presidential hopeful Senator Barak Obama at the just concluded Clinton Global Initiative promised to work to erase the global primary education gap by 2015 by setting up a $2 billion global education fund. The Clinton Foundation are going to convince 16 world leaders to support school feeding and de worming programme in schools.

All in all, there were a lot of flowery and promising speeches and pledges by the class of 2015, nevertheless the ultimate determinant of the destiny of the 75 million children out of school would be the priorities of governments and other stakeholders and political will. After all, President Bush did not hesitate to propose a $700 billion bail out plan for the American economy that experts say benefits the rich, while only $5 billion is needed to get five million children into school and out of poverty.

Former bonded labourer, Devli asks the world leaders at the High Level Event on MDGs in the UN, New York

 When rescued as a 7 year old, Devli had not seen paper, did not know tap water or that a banana is eaten after peeling it. This young girl is now the classmate of the likes of world political leaders, faith group leaders, CEOs of like Gordon Brown, PM of UK; Kevin Ruud, Prime Minister of Australia; Queen Rania of Jordan; Robert Zoellick, President of World Bank; Koichiro Matsuura, Director General, UNESCO; Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia; John Sentamu, Archbishop of York; Craig Barret, President of Intel and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, singers Bono and Bob Geldof. These dignitaries were participants of the high level event on education on MDGs dubbed “Class of 2015: Education for All” campaign organised as part of the UN General Assembly in the UN in New York.  

Chosen to represent the voice of child and bonded labourers, Devli narrated her story of working at a stone quarry in Haryana, “We would work from morning 4 AM and work until the next night 3 AM. We were beaten if we took rest at any time. It was gruelling and very tough. I was born there and so were my parents.” Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) rescued the entire family along with 112 others in 2004 and rehabilitated them in Jodhpur, their native district. “In my village, I went around from family to family, and helped enrol 15 children into school. If I as a girl could enrol 15 children; wouldn’t all of you as world leaders be able to enrol all children into schools?” was her innocent question to the galaxy of some of the world’s most influential people. 

Addressing the audience, Kailash Satyarthi, the President of GCE said: “That children are still out of school is a shame on the face of the earth. There are currently 77 million children out of school Even if 7 children remain deprived of education; we are the people responsible for it. This is a historic event when all leaders have come together on one platform and we should now take the responsibility for providing education for all the children of the world.” The class of 2015 is a campaign for genuine commitment to the achievement of education for all.  

The high level event saw the world leaders making financial commitments to the tune of USD 4.5 Bn collectively for the education of children over the next three years. This would help educate over 15 million children around the world. Gordon Brown, the UK PM said: “What is a better way to reach out to out of school children than to put each one into school? There is no cause better than this and England is a proud member of the class of 2015.” Kevin Ruud, the Australian PM acknowledged the British PM’s leadership and stated Australia’s commitment to the World Bank’s Fast Track Initiative for education for all.  

Queen Rania of Jordan spoke of the strong need for girl’s education; especially because girls like Devli are out of school for reasons like taking care of siblings, fetching water and performing other household chores. The representatives of Bill Clinton Foundation,  

The eminent singers Bono and Bob Geldof were present for the event and said that they would keep reminding the leaders of their promises to world’s children wherever they travelled and performed.  

Corporate heads, Craig Barrett of Intel and John Chambers of Cisco pledged support to the cause. They also spoke of the work that they along with Microsoft Corp were doing for providing education through their foundations especially in Africa. More than 15 children have become software literate through our programmes they said.  

John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, leaders of the civil society organisations- Comic Relief, Save the Children Fund, Action Aid, Oxfam International were the other speakers. All these dignitaries signed up for the class of 2015, the class of the world leaders that would be graded for performance on aid for education and scores given at the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2 and 3 addressing education. Global Campaign for Education (GCE) would be the International Secretariat for the Class of 2015.  

The wide gamut of leaders from the political arena, faith groups, civil society and corporates coming together for a single cause made it a unique event - to pledge resources so that children like Devli don’t remain out of school, so that the gap in funding doesn’t come in the way of achieving the MDGs 2 and 3 on education.