Doha: HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Education Above All Foundation participated on Thursday in a discussion session organized by the Foundation titled " Educate A Child - Zero Out of School Children" as part of World Innovation Summit for Education WISE 2021.
The session was attended by Director-General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay, and Vice President of the Republic of the Gambia HE Dr Isatou Touray. President of the Republic of Rwanda HE Paul Kagame, made an intervention during the session as well.
In her speech, Her Highness touched on the Education Above All Foundation's "zero" strategy, which aims to reduce the percentage of out-of-school children in several countries, stressing the need for all sectors to cooperate to achieve the goal of universal primary education.
During the discussion, Her Highness stated that education is an acquired right for every child, a key to resolving prevailing social and economic issues, a means to inculcate culture and identity and a social and economic enabler, noting that although education is one of the most important pillars for achieving sustainable development goals, there are some countries that have not yet achieved universal primary education, especially since according to the latest statistics, there are more than 59 million children of primary school age around the world who are not enrolled in schools.
Education Above All's strategy offers a practical solution to target multiple countries, through multi-sectoral partnerships, in order to reach every child out of school.
Her Highness concluded her speech by saying that the pandemic has increased the burden on marginalized children and deprived of education. Just as the international community joined forces to confront COVID-19, we should cooperate in the same spirit so that education becomes a vaccination against social pandemics, foremost of which is intolerance, inequality and poverty, because education alone can achieve a lot.
The Education Above All Foundation is currently working to secure and implement partnerships on the ground to intensify efforts in Gambia, Rwanda, Zanzibar and Djibouti to reduce the percentage of out-of-school children, through this initiative, the Foundation works hand in hand with a number of countries to identify and register marginalized children, and the hard-to-reach category of uneducated children at the primary level.
