Kenya 's marathon star seeks to help children get quality education
Kenya 's leading women athlete and one time the fastest female runner in history has embarked on an ambitious campaign to give quality education to children from the pastoral communities in the greater Horn of Africa. Tegla Loroupe, the former marathon world record holder and winner of several elite city marathon races, disclosed that she was constructing a Peace Academy which will draw children from warring pastoral communities in Kenya , Uganda , Southern Sudan and Ethiopia. People's Daily Online, 26th August 2006

Sadtu: Access to education has not improved
Twelve years into a democratic South Africa access to education has not improved, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) said on Wednesday. “In the 1980s the issue was about race, but now it's a class matter. The only black children who go to the best schools are those who can afford them,” said Sadtu president Willie Madisha. Mail & Online Guardian, 23rd August 2006

Poverty a threat to new Palestinian school year
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – “I don't have the money to send my children to school,” broods father-of-four Mohammed Abu Mur in depressed south Gaza . A Palestinian civil servant, he has not been paid for six months. Like many other Palestinian parents facing the grim reality of a worsening financial crisis in the Gaza Strip, he cannot afford books or uniforms to send his children back to the classroom after the long summer holidays. Middle East Times, 23rd August 2006

Lolona shows it's never too late to learn
Lolona changed her life in just 48 days. That's all the time it took for this 30-year-old from Madagascar to learn to read and write in an innovative literacy project sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “My life has completely changed,” she says, describing how she now can write to her relatives and read their letters. “What I've learned is very important for my work selling goods,” she adds.
UN Works

Education: Crucial to break the cycle of poverty
“Education is a crucial path out of poverty. A good education develops personal strengths and skills, self-esteem and job-related skills and life skills. It increases people's ability to access health and welfare services. Conversely, lack of income can prevent a child's participation from a range of mainstream educational activities, which have an adverse impact on school retention and participation, which in turn increases the likelihood of unemployment. Poor physical or mental health, unsuitable housing, conflicting family relationships and accessibility problems can all have a negative impact on educational retention and participation.” Anglicare

Global Education Website
The Global Education Website is initiated and funded by AusAID to support its Global Education Program. Among the 23 global issues covered, the education section includes teaching activities, case studies, useful links and resources. Teachers are invited to register to receive the Global Education Newsletter. Send a blank plain text email to join-globaleducation_news@edna.edu.au

www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go

Trafficked - The Child Sex Trade
This powerful documentary follows former police officer Chris Payne, as he investigates the shocking crime of trafficking for prostitution. For a decade, he's been haunted by the case of “Nikkie”, a young Thai girl who was deported after she was discovered working in a Sydney brothel. How did she get there? What happened to her afterwards? Payne follows the trail of evidence from Australia to Thailand . Along the way, he meets the parents of another Thai “sex slave” whose death in an immigration detention centre in Sydney made headlines. Through these stories, Trafficked provides a disturbing insight into the international sex trade.

SBS Television, Thursday 31st August 2006, 8:30 pm

“… basic education is the first objective for any nation seeking to develop itself. Lack of education is as serious as lack of food; the illiterate is a starved spirit. When someone learns how to read and write, s/he is equipped to do a job and to shoulder a profession, to develop self confidence and realise that s/he can progress along with others. As we said in our message to the UNESCO meeting at Teheran, literacy is the ‘first and most basic tool for personal enrichment and social integration; and it is society's most valuable tool for furthering development and economic progress'.”

Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), Encyclical of Pope Paul VI, March 26, 1967.

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