We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Melissa Fraser of Camarillo, CA, were so good that we wanted to share them with you.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

Reeds on Fire

By Melissa Fraser
Camarillo, CA

My body shoots upright before my mind focuses onto what is happening. Some instinct is warning me to react as if experiencing an emergency. Checking the clock, it’s 3 in the bitterly cold winter morning, and the normally still village is rustling a bit. The village school next door to my hut persistently ringing a deafening bell, and I sniff around expecting to smell burning thatch.

Grabbing a sitenge wrap, I emerge from the front door and fumble with the gate lock to peer out the courtyard’s reed fence. Strangely, there is no panic, no fire, but a group of teenage students stumbling through the dark to the single lantern-lit classroom at the school. With end of the year exams looming, these students are taking advantage of the school’s early morning study session.

Since candles and paraffin oil can exhaust the meager, if existent, income of a rural Caprivian family, sitting in a classroom around the free lighting is as alluring to ambitious students as blooming acacia trees to a giraffe. Borrowed and gratuitously used books sit on the desks in front of students who are bundled in what tattered clothing they may own. As I shiver myself back under three blankets for a couple more hours of sleep, the youth of Namibia’s forgotten region dedicate the dark hours to getting ahead in life through education.

Once daylight introduces (more…)

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Jennifer Pereyda from Fremont, California, were so good that we wanted to share them with you.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

Opening Doors

By Jennifer Pereyda
Fremont, CA

Growing up, I was the kid teachers often referred to as the class “bookworm.” I loved to read and devoured any book I could get my hands on. This love of books even went so far as to include Encyclopedias. I would pick a volume up and read it from cover to cover, baffling family and friends who had difficulty understanding a child that read encyclopedias for fun.

With such an appetite for (more…)

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

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Shannon Mouillesseaux of New York, were so good that we wanted to share them with you.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

Why Them?

By Shannon Mouillesseaux
New York

There, gazing at me, were two piercing eyes set inside an emaciated face, skin clasped tightly around small cheekbones. I hesitated to look back. The television screen separated him from me, but it was as if he was inside it and would step out, his swollen belly thrust towards me.

The school week had finished, and I was watching TV while enjoying a special dinner — golden pancakes swimming in maple syrup. I was lapping it up when I felt his intense eyes. He appeared my age, but his dark, sullen eyes suggested they had witnessed far more than mine.

The program’s narrator spoke (more…)

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Robin Strickler, a US citizen in Kigali, Rwanda, were so good that we wanted to share them here.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

Going Without

By Robin Strickler
US citizen in Kigali, Rwanda

As an American teacher starting a secondary school in Rwanda’s Eastern Province, I am both nonplussed by the hunger our students have for education and repeatedly dismayed by what it means to go without it.

My husband almost went without. Born in a Tanzanian refugee camp, he was one of three primary students selected from his school to go on to secondary education. Like most of his classmates, he ran 14 kilometers to and from school. Today he is a church leader with two master’s degrees who works in community development in Rwanda. He gives back to the community with a passion that is shared by many other former refugees. We often wonder together: how many others were left behind?

“Jimmy” and John Peter are hungry for it: they come and politely beg to be allowed to take our precious library books home. Jimmy carries a dog-eared dictionary with yellowed pages everywhere he goes and John Peter has filled notebook pages with carefully lettered vocabulary words he has learned.

Mutoni and Jean-Baptiste went without in the war years, and now in their twenties, their awkwardly formed handwriting tells of primary school lessons lost when their eye-hand coordination could have been trained to write with ease. Mutoni ducks her head with embarrassment when she can’t answer a question but she is too ashamed to ask the questions that would help her learn.

I’m also moved by the stream of mothers who are hungry for their children’s education: their faces careworn, their kitenge and headscarves faded but clean, they speak softly and persistently to implore us to help their daughters and sons. Lacking education themselves, they know it is what their children need to battle the poverty that wears people down, year by year.

The Rwandan government is keenly aware that girls should not go without education. With the continent’s highest population density, family planning, development and literacy are important tools for improving society and girls play a key role in changing those patterns. Yet girls are the most likely to stay home when family members are sick, when water needs to be carried, or when they menstruate if they don’t have access to modern supplies.

Rwandans around me are hungry for things to read. (more…)

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Maureen Rooney of Annandale, NJ, were so good that we wanted to share them here.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

Education Empowers

Maureen Rooney
Annandale, NJ

On March 11, 2005, I suffered a severe brain injury caused by a ruptured brain aneurysm. I was in a coma for three days at Jefferson Neuroscience Hospital in Philadelphia, and almost died. I spent two weeks at Jefferson and two additional months in rehabilitation facilities.

When I recovered to a moderate brain injury, I was searching for a cause I could advocate for and wholeheartedly believe in. I needed a cause that champions those in need and empowers those who have little. That is when I learned about ONE and its network of grassroots activists. Through ONE.org, I would be able to affect public and world policy for the better, empower those who dared dream of hope, and help educate those who yearn to read, write and to communicate.

ONE rekindled my latent idealism and lifted me from my own catastrophic situation by helping me to put my brain injury into proper perspective. Fortunately, at the time of my illness I was living and working in Philadelphia, a center of excellence for neuroscience. Because my brother and sister-in-law became my advocates, my life was saved. I needed to do something with my life that would validate their belief in me.

Before my brain injury, I had an established career in the publishing industry as a sales executive. I have a B.A. in English from William Paterson University. During my sales career, I traveled all over the world and toured many of the countries I read about as a student. My dreams were to travel the world and to become an author. I always believed I had stories to share with the world. I was well-traveled and well-read, but I was not yet a writer.

Through sales I became a strong communicator. Through ONE, I used my persuasive abilities and communication skills to lobby my legislators and inform the media of the plight of those battling extreme poverty, disease and illiteracy. I have been an involved and motivated member of ONE.org since 2006.

I have lobbied my senators, congressional representatives and the 2008 Presidential candidates with phone calls, emails and letters. I have written to New Jersey’s highest circulating newspapers. I have attended and participated in meet ups with my Congressional representative. I have written to Secretary of State Clinton about the key issues of global poverty and disease and the need to intervene in crises such as those in Zimbabwe. I proudly sign every ONE.org petition I receive.

I realized that without education, I would have been powerless to influence change. Joining ONE.org continued my education. It reminded me that those who live and are educated in the non-industrial world critically need the tools and building blocks to improve their situation.

The most important advantage we can give to one another is a good education. (more…)

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Thad Collins of Coralville, IA, were so good that we wanted to share them here.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

My Education from Educating My Children

By Thad Collins
Coralville, IA

Being a parent of wonderful, healthy, and thriving children has now made it impossible for me not to be part of ONE.

I live in Iowa — the heartland of America and launching pad of many political stories. The sun rises here over houses filled with families that enjoy the simple things: abundant food (in fact too much); unlimited clean, hot and cold running water; and a pediatrician one phone call away for a sick child. Most of us, and certainly I, don’t want to think that these simple things (hum-drum facts really) are only a distant or impossible dream for millions in this world. It is not that we don’t care, but we have enough stresses and challenges without thoughts of such daunting realities.

Forcing ourselves to acknowledge the gut-wrenching fact that parents in Africa routinely bury their children — victims of extreme poverty and disease — is a horrible thought we understandably want to avoid. To confront the full reality that such soul-piercing tragedy is only part of the story — which includes surviving children living in physical conditions far worse than jailed murderers face in this country, and often without any parents at all in the home because AIDS killed them both — really seems too much to embrace when, like most, I feel maxed out by the stress and demands of my life.

Now imagine trying to explain this downright mean and ugly reality for millions of children in our world to your own blessed and privileged kids — and then try to explain how we are too busy to act on it. I did just that and received, in return, my own education that almost forced me to be a ONE member.

As soon as I started to explain some of this cruel reality, my children’s faces immediately foretold their response: “This is not real, it can’t be, it’s not possible. How could an 8 year old raise a 5 year old with both parents being dead? We would never allow that. How could someone not have clean, hot and cold running water? They could turn the faucet on or call someone to fix it. How could kids starve? There is food everywhere, we are even being taught to stop eating so much.”

Our kids had to see to believe. (more…)

We asked ONE members for submissions to The Big Read book — a collection of stories from people around the world supporting education for everyone. Although only one member story will be published in the book, the runner-up submissions, including the one below from Beatrice Munyenyezi of Manchester, NH, were so good that we wanted to share them here.

You can show your support for The Big Read and help ensure a pathway out of poverty for children around the world. Endorse the book by adding your signature here.

Thanks for reading!

-Emily Stivers

The Key of Life

Beatrice Munyenyezi
Manchester, NH

If I had all might, I will use it all, to send every child around the globe to school. My parents were born in 1924, during the Belgian colonization in Africa. They were not allowed to go to school. We were told their year of birth by the missionaries. Whether it’s true or not, no one knows, except that my father can no longer walk on his own. Despite their illiteracy, they managed to send 10 of us to elementary school. Elementary school was not free like here in USA; simply, my father understood that we needed an education.

When I reached third grade, I could barely read a whole sentence. Some of my siblings were in boarding school then, others lived faraway. Every time they wrote to my father, he gave me the letter to read it to him. When I didn’t understand a word, I skipped it, made up my own word for the sentence to make sense, and moved on to the next sentence. At the end, my father would make me reread the whole letter, which I despised. Because he could not read a newspaper, he listened to the radio, and associated with people who had an education to get more knowledge on the world.

As for my mother, she told me that not being able to read or write felt like life under the sea. I told her that I will learn all she had missed. Most of the kids in my village didn’t finish elementary school, half of them dropped out before reaching eighth grade. Those who completed eighth grade could not afford high school. I always knew how lucky I was, and I didn’t take it for granted. I worked hard every year, because I knew how hard it was on my father to pay my school fees.

Unfortunately, I left the continent before completing my education. My father was not able to see me graduate. I have not seen him for the last 18 years. I am sure he would have been happy to see me graduate on May 20, 2009, perhaps a smile for my high honors, despite not knowing the meaning behind it. The last time I spoke with him on the phone, he told me that he was alive because I was able to go to school. My drive to achieve a degree has been those that I left behind without an education, my father who worked hard for me to have an education, and my mother to whom I promised I would learn it all.

A village without educated citizens is a closed society. There are many villages around the world including my own. It feels unjust, to me, for a child not to be able to read and write. In this time of war, poverty, and diseases, the only way you can console a child is to give him or her chance to read and write. It’s very painful to watch a child running after cows, sheep or goats, because it is the only way of survival. Save the children, and human society will be better and safe for the next generation, not because of what you have said, but because of what you have done.

Education has given me a key of life; what is left for me is to find the right door. On my walk to school, I never dreamed that someday, I would be able to speak and write a sentence in English. Now, I think of those I left behind and those who came after me without an opportunity of education. How far can they go, what will be their contribution to society, and most of all if society was raising millions of my parents, who would lead?

To me, school became a walk to remember. In those days, every day was painful and valuable. To those who are hungry for education, keep faith and aim high. The bright day will come. This is my memoir, my song, my message, my hope, and my wish to you.

Christina Holder, a ONE member from Georgia, is the winner of our Big Read story contest. Christina’s drive for education in her own life contrasts poignantly with the lack of education she observes while researching human rights in Zambia, and she has used her education to fight for education for others through her involvement with ONE.

Christina’s story will be published in The Big Read, a storybook promoting literacy and education worldwide. ONE and the Global Campaign for Education will present this book to President Obama on June 16, the Day of the African Child. Please click here add your name to The Big Read to show your support for global education.

Here is Christina’s story:

Education for Social Transformation
By Christina Holder, GA

On a recent sun-filled afternoon, I walked through one of Lusaka, Zambia’s dusty, high-density neighborhoods to survey community awareness of human rights and the country’s development goals. I was accompanied by Mwambi, one of the local law students with whom I am collaboratively writing a human rights based assessment of the national development plan.

The purpose of our survey was to gauge whether the government is fulfilling its obligations to raise awareness of human rights among Lusaka’s low-income residents, and to engage them in the process of national development. As we went door-to-door, it became clear that few people knew about their human rights, even fewer had heard of the Millennium Development Goals, and no one had heard of Zambia’s Fifth National Development Plan.

Our findings were not surprising, as many of the individuals we interviewed had not completed primary school, and some — especially the girls and women — had never set foot in a classroom. Lacking a strong educational foundation, they were deprived of exercising their right to know about and participate in the economic and social development of their country.

Halfway through the afternoon, we approached a young man and asked him to complete our survey. He was reluctant at first. I explained that I am a human rights lawyer from the United States, Mwambi is a law student from the University of Zambia, and together we are studying local knowledge of human rights and development.

“So you are learning as you teach her,” he observed with approval. After he finished the survey, he reflected that while he had completed grade twelve, most people in his community could not afford to pay the hidden costs associated with Zambia’s supposedly “free” education system. He lamented that without a basic education, these people cannot hold the government accountable for ensuring that national development benefits them and the majority of other Zambians who live in extreme poverty.

The young man’s words lingered with me, as they clarified my own understanding of the meaning of education. First, basic education is the means through which people make sense of themselves and their world. Without access to primary and secondary education that is free, quality, and compulsory, children are deprived of the opportunity to develop skills necessary to live a dignified and productive life. This deprivation not only violates their human rights to education and self-actualization, but also prevents them from contributing to the sustainable development of their communities.

After living in Zambia for eight months, I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have received a solid elementary, middle and high school education through the public education system in Augusta, Georgia. My education developed me as a whole person. I studied core academic subjects as well as art, drama, foreign languages, and policy debate.

It was the last subject — policy debate — that I fell in love with. (more…)

I have learned so much about ONE members through reading the stories you submitted for The Big Read book, and am truly humbled by the experiences you have shared with us.

I have learned that ONE has strong roots not only in Africa, but in Latin America, India, Russia, Europe, Australia and beyond. The number of countries and cultures woven throughout the nearly a thousand pages’ worth of stories I read, and the diversity of ONE members in general, absolutely floors me.

More impressive still is how each of you — or the people whose stories you shared — overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Extreme poverty. Abuse. Learning disabilities. Physical disabilities. Disease. Desolation. Your enduring hope, and your motivation to make a difference in the lives of the world’s poorest people through ONE, is incredibly moving. And humbling.

On behalf of all of us on staff here at ONE, I want to thank every single person who submitted a story to The Big Read. Although we must choose ONE winner (which we will announce via an email to all our members soon) to be published in The Big Read book, we will feature many of the runner-up stories as a series here on the ONE blog, and we’re hoping to eventually publish the full collection as our own storybook.

Thank you for sharing your stories with me, and with ONE. You will not be forgotten.

-Emily Stivers