Education for All Children
Education Is a Child's Right
Every child has the right to an education. Education transforms lives and breaks the cycle of poverty that traps so many children. An educated child will make sure her own children receive an education.
Whether we're building schools, making classrooms mobile, training teachers, or even rebuilding an entire educational system—we will do whatever it takes to support a child's right to education.
Innovative Education Programs to Reach All Children
UNICEF has come up with some unique ways to make education accessible to all children.
- Through our Schools for Africa partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, we are increasing enrollment among girls, orphans and children in extreme poverty.
- The recently launched Schools for Asia builds on the success of Schools for Africa to provide access and quality education for disadvantaged children living across Asia and the Pacific.
- In Kenya, an innovative UNICEF program helps children in nomadic communities in search of water to continue schooling.
- In Afghanistan, where under Taliban rule women and girls were forbidden to attend school, we are setting up literacy centers so that all children can get the education they deserve.
- Our Connecting Classrooms initiative has been recognized by Devex as a leading education innovation.
- Our emphasis on Child-Friendly schooling has allowed children who never had the opportunity to learn to thrive in a rights-based environment.
Education in Emergencies
In the aftermath of war, often nothing can make a child feel more secure than having a school to go to. After the Rwandan genocide, 800,000 people were dead and 95,000 children were orphaned. Many children had witnessed horrible violence or were forced to commit atrocities. For these children, going back to school meant a return to normalcy.
So UNICEF developed its School-in-a-Box kit, a portable classroom with all the supplies needed to hold a class anywhere. Since then our School-in-a-Box kits have been distributed during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, after Hurricane Katrina, to earthquake survivors in Haiti.
Today, school kits are being delivered to children trapped in emergency situations in Ivory Coast, the Libyan border and Japan. Semi-permanent schools are being built in post-emergency zones in Haiti and Pakistan.
Support UNICEF's Right to Education Fund.
Related Education Links
January 31, 2012
Flood-affected students resume studies in the Philippines
UNICEF and partners are supporting the reconstruction of 23 severely damaged schools and 68 day-care centers in the Philippines following the devastating floods caused by Tropical Storm Washi last December. An estimated 1.1 million people were affected by the disaster and many schools were completely or partially destroyed. Schools offer a lifeline to children by helping restore a sense of normalcy immediately following a disaster and in the long term promote social cohesion and contribute to the social and economic stability in affected areas.
January 20, 2012
Playing, learning and recovering in Haiti
It might look like simple fun, but the dominos, coloring pencils, construction blocks, hand puppets, puzzle pieces and memory games are about more than just a good time for children in Haiti. They are part of the thousands of early childhood development kits UNICEF has distributed since Haiti’s devastating earthquake to reintroduce normalcy and stability to the lives of children. The kits are part of a broader UNICEF program to help children recover from the trauma and prepare them for years of learning and growth.
January 20, 2012
UNICEF launches Schools for Asia to protect right to an education of millions
Among the 67 million children who are currently not enrolled in school worldwide, 26 million or nearly 40% of them live in the Asia-Pacific Region. UNICEF's new Schools for Asia campaign will help improve the access and quality of education for disadvantaged children living across 11 countries in Asia and the Pacific. The campaign will focus on securing the right to education for all with a special focus on the most marginalized, excluded or otherwise vulnerable children, including girls and children from poor families and of ethnic minorities.
