Activists gather virtually for the International AIDS Conference, Sudan bans female genital mutilation, and the latest US funding bill fails to deliver global COVID-19 response funds.
Here are six stories you might have missed this month.
COVID-19 could wipe out equality gains for women at work
The COVID-19 pandemic could wipe out “the modest progress” made on gender equality in the workplace, warns the International Labour Organization (ILO). The drop in global working hours is “significantly worse than previously estimated” earlier this...
Education
Even before COVID-19, 90% of children in low-income countries could not read and understand a simple sentence. The global learning crisis is the biggest educational threat of our time, not just because it means that individual potential is being squandered. The world’s future hangs in the balance. After all, the children of today are the doctors and public health professionals of tomorrow.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this sobering picture has only gotten worse. At its peak, COVID-19 pushed 1.6 billion...
Sabine Terlecki is the deputy lead of donor relations at the Global Partnership for Education.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, children and youth all over the world are no longer in classrooms. Home schooling has become the new normal. This is a new situation for everyone, everywhere — but in developing countries, COVID-19 poses enormous challenges for children and parents and further exacerbates existing inequalities.
In my own country of Germany, the education system normally functions quite well. However,...
The world has made massive strides in ending extreme poverty over the past two decades. Since 2000, over a billion people have escaped extreme poverty. At that rate, the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 could be possible.
But the problem is far from solved. Today, 592 million people worldwide are living on under US$1.90 a day. While extreme poverty is decreasing on the whole, more people are entering extreme poverty in the countries most affected by poverty....
This is the second post in a series about how we ensure children are learning in school. We kicked off with an overview of the evidence pointing to a global learning crisis and how we can solve it. Now, we’re looking into global progress in access to education, and where there is still room for improvement.
Improving education is critical to our mission of ending poverty: if everyone completed secondary education, we could cut the number of people living in...
The 2020 Gates Letter, marking the 20th anniversary of the Gates Foundation, dropped this week. Each year, the Gates annual letter makes an argument for what, why, and how we should invest to make the most meaningful impact on the world. It paints a portrait of where the world has been, where it currently is, and where it can go with the right action.
This year, the letter takes on the theme of “swinging for the fences,” which is advice...
In recent years, conversations about the gender gap seems to be happening everywhere. But, what exactly is the gender gap, and how do we close it?
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index is a yearly report that addresses this question. This index, now in its 14th edition, records gender inequalities and how they change over time. It shows how we’re progressing, how large the gaps still are, and how we can close them for good.
A gender gap is...
This is the first post in a monthly series about how we ensure children are learning in school. We’re kicking off with an overview of the evidence pointing to a global learning crisis and how we can solve it. Stay tuned for more stories that dive deeper into the evidence and our solutions for better global education outcomes.
Improving education is central to our work here at ONE. To have the biggest impact, we wanted to identify what the greatest...
We’re all familiar with the cliche: children are the future. But it’s repeated over and over for a reason: it is accurate, and critical. The lives and experiences of youth today will be the basis of the future. If we want to create the best possible tomorrow, children need to experience the best possible today.
Wadi Ben-Hirki is a youth activist and philanthropist in Nigeria focused on helping marginalized communities, particularly women and youths, access education and opportunities they are...
The word “scary” likely brings to mind creepy creatures, spooky specters, masked murderers, or any number of iconic horror images. But “global development” likely isn’t the first scary thing that enters your mind.
While it won’t be the topic of the next big horror movie, some of the challenges facing development can be truly horrifying. From extreme poverty, to gender equality, to corruption, these issues affect millions of people worldwide. Even the most vicious, havoc-wreaking creature of the night wouldn’t...