Hello, I’m Christina Holder, a ONE member from Augusta, Georgia, currently working as a Uriel and Caroline Bauer Human Rights Law Fellow in Lusaka, Zambia, where I promote human rights-based approaches to development. My education has enabled me to understand and transform some of the root causes of social injustice. I believe every individual deserves the opportunities education creates.

That’s why I sent my personal story to The Big Read, a movement to secure $2 billion for a Global Fund for Education. I would be honored if your name, and the names of tens of thousands of ONE members, would accompany my story when ONE and the Global Campaign for Education deliver it to President Obama in June.

With the book and our signatures, ONE will include this inscription:

Please ensure all children have access to quality basic education by making a U.S. contribution of $2 billion to a Global Fund for Education.

To add your name to the book, please click this link:

http://www.one.org/us/bigreadpetition/o.pl

I’ve spent eight months in Zambia, and have realized that quality education is the key to lifting individuals, and the nation, out of poverty. After learning how to read themselves, women I work with from Lusaka’s Garden Compound pooled their resources to open a “community school” so their children could learn to read and write, too. At Mother Teresa Hospice and Community School, where I volunteer each Friday afternoon, some of the adult residents volunteer to teach children reading and math.

Without the opportunity to attend school, these children risk becoming child laborers in local industries such as stone-crushing — pounding big rocks into gravel for sale to builders. But slowly, regular Zambians are laying the foundation for every child to enjoy the right to quality education, a prerequisite for ending poverty.

By adding your name to The Big Read and encouraging our government to support a Global Fund for Education, we can help Zambia and other countries finance high-quality education for even the most impoverished students.

Please sign The Big Read now, for all those who can’t:

http://www.one.org/us/bigreadpetition/o.pl

Thanks so much!

Christina Holder, ONE Member, Augusta, Georgia