Big Read
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…)
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
You have just one day left to submit your story to The Big Read, a book that will be translated and distributed in over 100 countries as a tool for promoting literacy and good quality, free and public education for everyone. The Global Campaign for Education will present this book to President Obama on June 16.
Learn more about the contest and submit your story here.
We’re looking for the 1,000-word-or-less story of a ONE member who has something to say about education. Whether you have actively campaigned for education initiatives through ONE, have your own unique experience with how education has impacted your life, or have brought education to others directly, we want your story.
On May 8, we will announce the one story to appear in The Big Read along with writings by Nelson Mandela, Queen Rania, Desmond Tutu, Natalie Portman and other notable figures.
Send us your story before midnight tomorrow — Friday, May 1 — to have it considered for the book.
-Emily Stivers
75 million children are out of school globally — a figure equivalent to the entire primary school-aged population in Europe and North America.
More than half of the out-of-school children are girls. Around the world, girls are much more likely than boys to never be enrolled in school, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (72% of out-of-school girls have never been enrolled, compared to 55% for boys).
That’s why ONE is teaming with the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) to support The Big Read: a new storybook encouraging literacy and education for everyone. Contributions to the book come from influential figures including Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan as well as Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Natalie Portman, Paulo Coelho and others.
Because of the important work ONE members do in advocating for global education, a ONE member will have her or his story published in The Big Read book. Click here to learn more and submit your story.
Education is a sound investment in people, global economies, and security. Education can offer a pathway for moving out of poverty, to finding a good job, and to becoming an active and valuable contributor to the social and economic health of our communities.
Education is particularly critical for girls. Educating girls for five years could boost child survival rates by up to 40%. Educated mothers are 50% more likely to immunize their children than are uneducated mothers. Providing an extra one year of education beyond the average boosts earnings by 10-20% for females, compared to 5-15% for males. And increasing the share of women with a secondary education by one percentage point boosts annual per capita income by 0.3%.
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