David Cole from the ONE UK office reports on this interesting development with 1GOAL:

© 2009 Foreign & Commonwealth Office

UK Foreign Office Minister Glenys Kinnock has signed up to the 1GOAL campaign during her recent visit to South Africa.

Speaking at Winnie Ngwekazi Primary School in Soweto, she said “Many millions more children are in school now because governments have focussed on that as a priority, but it is still totally unacceptable that 75 million children are not receiving any kind of primary education.”

She also said that she will discuss 1GOAL when Commonwealth leaders meet next month in Trinidad & Tobago.

The 1GOAL campaign, a partner to ONE, aims to ensure that the lasting legacy of the football World Cup next year in South Africa is that every child can be learning in school by 2015.

Watch this interview with Glenys Kinnock discussing 1GOAL:

Our friends at 1GOAL report on several meetings Jessica Alba held with Speaker Pelosi, the Obama administration, and Secretary Hillary Clinton. As we’ve written about before, 1GOAL is a campaign focused around the 2010 World Cup to provide education for all children.

You can read more about 1GOAL here, and their report of the meetings here.

Over the weekend I happened to catch this clip with Queen Rania on CNN. It covers an array of subjects, but I thought the particular focus on education would be of interest to readers.

She also discusses 1GOAL in detail (which we’ve covered here) as well as the role of social networking in creating change.

Hopefully you got a chance to tune in to the live webcast of the 1GOAL launch this past Tuesday. The London kick-off, which was hosted by 1GOAL founder Queen Rania of Jordan and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, featured a variety of speakers via satellite (such as FIFA President Sepp Blatter in Zurich, President Zuma in South Africa, Prime Minister Zapatero in Madrid) as well as a special message from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sec. Clinton talked about the role education plays in lifting families and countries out of poverty and also said that the U.S. “is committed to working with partners of all kinds- other governments, businesses, academics, activists, parents and teachers- everyone who wants to help us expand access to education for children everywhere.”

As many of you might remember from ONE Vote ’08, global education was one of President Obama’s strongest development commitments during the campaign, with a promise that if he became president the U.S. would contribute $2 billion to a Global Education Fund.

Hopefully this message from Sec. Clinton for 1GOAL is a sign that the Administration is ready to get serious about a making strong, new investment in global education. As Senator, Sec. Clinton championed global education with the bi-partisan Education for All Act, which would have scaled up U.S. development assistance to its fair share of the amount needed to send every child to school around the world. It’s great news that Sec. Clinton has lent her voice to 1GOAL and hopefully a sign that with her leadership, the Administration will get to work on turning President Obama’s campaign pledge into a reality for millions of children around the world.

PS– Check out photos from the global launch here.

David Cole from ONE’s UK office writes about the country’s party conferences and the launch of their ONE Vote campaign (very similar to what we did in the US around the 2008 presidential election. The launch was also a chance to celebrate 1GOAL, which you can read more about here.

Last week ONE was at the Labour Party conference, where we held an event to launch our ONE Vote campaign as well as celebrating 1GOAL and the fact that the football World Cup will be held in Africa for the first time ever next year.

We were lucky to be joined by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who spoke about the issues. Two footballers also spoke, South African captain Aaron Mokoena and John Utaka, who plays for Nigeria and Portsmouth. They were followed by Glenys Kinnock, Minister for Europe, and Douglas Alexander, the Minister for International Development.

The ONE team is now in Manchester for the Conservative Party Conference, which started earlier this week, and we’re getting ready to host a reception this evening. We’ll be blogging more about the event soon so please stay tuned.

-David Cole

For those interested, here’s a live stream of the 1GOAL Global Launch taking place now.

Note: Since the video is on auto-play click “more” link below to check it out:

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Tomorrow, October 6th, at 9am EST, 1GOAL will be streaming their global launch. 1GOAL, as you may recall, featured prominently at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting where they were joined by ONE’s co-founder Bono. The global launch will feature Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and many others.

According to 1GOAL’s website,

World leaders from seven countries will join UN Secretary General, FIFA President Sepp Blatter and leading football players from around the world to announce support for the 2010 FIFA World Cup 1GOAL: Education for All campaign.

Hosted by football legend Gary Lineker, political figures and footballers from around the world will convene via satellite to sign up to 1GOAL – helping to ensure that the 2010 FIFA World Cup will leave a lasting legacy of education for all.

Be sure to check out tomorrow’s live webcast here.

Last week, while attending the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, I saw Jessica Alba join Bono, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan and others onstage to pledge commitment to 1GOAL: Education for All. It was a really cool moment in a week full of really cool moments, which I wrote about here.

Today Jessica Alba has a great article in the Huffington Post reflecting on CGI, global education, and 1GOAL. Excerpts below, full piece here. We’ll have more on 1GOAL soon!

I was part of a CGI commitment with 1GOAL: Education for All to talk about the 75 million children denied access to education around the world today. If you’re keeping count, that’s as if every school in the U.S. and Europe combined decided one day to close their doors. Joining Global Co-Chair Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, ONE co-founder Bono, FIFA and private sector leaders, I signed up to be US Co-Chair of 1GOAL and help work for a breakthrough on global education centered around the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The 2010 World Cup will be the first hosted by Africa, and 1GOAL views the world’s biggest sporting event as an opportune platform to persuade the millions of fans who peacefully come together to share the love of soccer to also unite on educating the world’s children. Our goal is to sign up 30 million World Cup supporters to call on our leaders to make education for all children a priority and reality. Name by name, we believe we can bring attention to global education disparities and make change a reality.

In the US we take for granted that our children have a right to education and the opportunities education provides. But for tens of millions of kids in the developing world, children who are just like our kids, the chance for an education is a hope and a dream, but not yet a reality. These could be our next generation’s leaders, athletes, doctors, teachers, and parents. They’re ready to do their homework, but school fees, conflict, working in factories and farms, losing their parents to sickness, the cost of a school uniform or simply being a girl can keep them from being able to attend school.