GAW 2009
Each year the Global Action Week promotes a specific themed campaign linked to the 6 GCE Goals. The theme for the Global Action Week in 2009 was the Big Read acknowledging the terrible fact that:
“One in five people cannot read this.”
Our picture above shows reknown Irish author Roddy Doyle and children from Swords Educate Together NS at the formal launch of the Big Read in the Irish Volunteer Centre.
It was a great Big Read celebration for the Irish Coalition for the Global Campaign for Education! Following introductory remarks by Chairperson Moira Leydon, Roddy Doyle read Michael Morpurgo story from the Big Read Book. Many schools and youth clubs also read the same story throughout the country as part of their Big Read event.
Pupils from Swords Educate Together put on a fantastic show about Nicaragua, School and Child Labour-highlighting the need for education and children’s rights.
Secondary school students Ruth Ní Bheoláin, Richard Whelan, Cathy Gormley, Rebecca Doran and Emma Prior read out their own poignant pieces on the importance of education outlining the real education issues that need to be tackled in the world today and emphasizing the fact that 774 million adults can not read or write.
Ifrah Ahmed & Olive Phelan-two students that have recently attended adult literacy courses with NALA (the National Adult Literacy Association) brought it all back home to the gathering and talked about their first hand experience of learning to read and write and how it has changed their life-their anecdotes about covering up the fact that they couldn’t read or write were heart-wrenching.
The Irish Big Book will be used to influence the Irish government to keep Education for All high up on the agenda within their Overseas Development Aid programme.
The event was particularly significant from a funding perspective and highlighted the outrage being expressed by members of the Irish Coalition for the Global Campaign for Education (ICGCE) at the targeting of overseas aid in the expenditure cuts outlined in supplementary budget for 2009. Ireland has cut its aid budget 4 times in the last year, knocking over 20% of our aid programme. The government had promised to spend 0.6% of national income on overseas aid by 2010, but is way off track: 2009 spending is set to come in at only 0.48% of national income. This could only mean that education for all will suffer and in particular funding to life long learning and youth and adult literacy programmes which is an area of education that is often neglected.
