It is no secret that humankind’s past actions have accelerated the deterioration of ecosystems, negatively impacting our economies, societies, health, and cultures. It is estimated that humans have altered over 97% of ecosystems worldwide, to date. One million species are currently threatened with extinction (IPBES). The writing on the wall is clear. Our planet is in crisis. The sobering reality is that if we continue on our current trajectory, biodiversity and the services it provides will continue to decline, jeopardizing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and our lives as we know them. The decline in biodiversity is expected to further accelerate unless effective action is taken to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss. These causes are often justified by societal values, norms and behaviors. Some examples include unsustainable production and consumption patterns, human population dynamics and trends, and technological innovation patterns.
The Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), Yasmine Sherif, and the UNICEF Representative, Grant Leaity, called on donors worldwide to provide US$45 million in urgent, additional funding to support ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country facing one of the world’s most overlooked crises.
As much of the world was starting to glimpse recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, it now finds itself amid a
cost-of-living crisis brought on by disruptions in global energy and food markets that are the result of conflict and climate change.
As we approach 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals look harder than ever to achieve. Shocks to the global economy caused by climate change, COVID-19, and conflict
threaten humanity's survival. For the most vulnerable, trends are moving in the wrong direction with an additional 75 to 95 million people now living in extreme poverty
compared to pre-pandemic World Bank projections. By the end of this year more than 657 million people will still be living in extreme poverty substantially more than in 2018.
When Elena Seungeun Lee discovered the extent of education inequity, she decided to do something about it. She started a YouTube channel, We Learn to Share, to teach online what she learned at school. We Learn to Share has become a student-led global NGO dedicated to bridging educational gaps, with more than 50 teenage volunteers from 11 countries and 29 high schools, and three universities around the world. We Learn to Share is solely led and run by teenagers who have beautiful sharing minds. This video was produced by Elena and fellow student Hyunsung Julie Lee.
Sigrid van Aken is the CEO of
Novamedia/Postcode Lottery Group, a private company with a social purpose, that brings together business and ideals. It sets up and operates Postcode Lotteries worldwide to raise funds for charity. With a lucky winning postcode (zipcode), neighbours win together. At the same time, thanks to these player communities, vital funding is raised for charities and good causes (yearly €825 million), making the Postcode Lottery Group the 3rd largest private charity donor in the world after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
When I started living in Thailand, I noticed something peculiar that I had never seen in other countries I had visited before. It was the stray dogs. I ran into so many stray dogs when jogging on the streets.
During my summer break this year, I read
a news article about five school cafeteria workers who had died of lung cancer. Due to these incidents, a union of cafeteria workers, wearing their aprons and holding their lunch trays,
held a protest in front of the President’s office on a scorching summer day. And it made us think about the devastating working conditions for the school lunch employees. Isn’t it so disheartening that we eat our school lunch at the expense of their health?
There is a main hall as well as workshops, laboratories and, of course, a cafeteria, where the half-hour break flies by amid card games and laughs. It could well be any university if it wasn't for those men armed with assault rifles at the entrance.
Taking the stage at this weekend’s Global Citizen Festival in New York’s Central Park, the LEGO Foundation CEO Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen announced a substantial new US$25 million contribution to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
Just a week ago, the international community commemorated the adoption of the United Nations Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, a monumental document that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies, and nations.
As the devastating images of flooding in Pakistan went round the world and the country declared a state of emergency, some 4,000 miles away in Stockholm, delegates had just arrived for World Water Week – an annual focal point for global water issues.
"When the pandemic hit, I stopped studying, just when it was my last year of school…My parents couldn't afford to pay for internet at home," said Rodrigo Reyes, 18, one of the nearly 250,000 children who dropped out of school in 2020.
After general elections on the 12th September, Sweden is on the threshold of a new era. The
Sweden Democrats (SD) won almost 21 percent of the votes and thus became the largest in a bloc of right-wing parties that now have a collective majority in the parliament. A nation that for a long time prided itself of being a beacon of tolerance and openness will now experience a historical transformation. The
Sweden Democrats was once founded by Nazi sympathisers and for decades shunned by mainstream politicians. However, SD has now tipped the political scale in a country previously known for its stable and predictable politics, and some of the party’s former foes are now willing to co-rule with them.
Refugee youth advocate, Mary Maker, called on UN member states to honor their commitments to transform education from the foundation up to the top, starting with those living in the direst and fraught circumstances.
Suicide bombings shattered Aisha Khurram’s school, and her university was attacked by terrorists – but despite learning in an environment where the walls were colored by blood spatter, it never shook her determination to be educated.
Leaders from across the world are uniting at the UN Secretary-General’s
Transforming Education Summit to address a global education crisis that threatens to derail decades of development gains and is depriving millions of girls across the world of their inherent human right to access a quality education.
Cross-continent vacations seem to be the norm once again with the lessening of COVID-19 while new cities are being built with skyscraping $4M condos shooting up in a matter of months, and just-out-of-University millennials launching into their careers with minimum start-off salaries of $75K.
If we truly want to re-imagine the role education can play in the decades to come, it is going to be indispensable to take drastic measures to elevate the role of teachers in developing countries.
Schools, students and teachers continue to be targeted and attacked in countries around the world. Over the past two years, we have seen a substantial increase in the number of attacks on education. Innocent children, adolescents and teachers are being killed, raped and abducted. Schools and universities are bombed, burned down and used for military purposes. Girls and boys are too scared to walk to school and face intimidation and other attacks. These are severe breaches of international humanitarian law and ultimately – and absolutely – inhumane.
Parliamentarians play a decisive role in addressing population issues, as was demonstrated when the majority voted against a private member motion to end the teaching of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in Zambia in 2020.