Title:
Education Group Gives $170 Million to 7 Countries
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
A three-year effort in developing countries will
seek to put twenty-five million children in school
for the first time. Another goal of the Global
Partnership for Education is to train six hundred
thousand teachers. The partnership recently awarded
nearly one hundred seventy million dollars in grants
to seven countries. These were the first grants
since the organization changed its name a few months
ago from the Fast Track Initiative. Fast Track was
founded in two thousand two. Charles Tapp is an
adviser to the partnership. He says, "There had been
a lot of evolution of the old Fast Track Initiative,
which was essentially something of a donors club, I
think. And what was clear from our perspective [was]
that we were not just a funding entity. This was
indeed a partnership." The partnership includes
almost fifty developing countries, as well as
donors, civil society groups and teacher
organizations. It also includes private companies,
international development banks and United Nations
agencies.The latest grants were awarded to
Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mali,
Moldova, Mongolia and Timor-Leste. Mr. Tapp says the
grant to Afghanistan is worth almost fifty-six
million dollars. He says the Afghan government "has
made a very strong commitment of allocating as much
of its own resources as it can for education.
Historically, Afghanistan has had some very, very
well-educated people. [They] tend to come from sort
of the urban centers. But obviously given the recent
troubles and problems in Afghanistan over the last
twenty years or so, the quality of education has
plummeted." Mr. Tapp says Ivory Coast received
forty-one million dollars to help in its recovery
from the recent political violence there. One goal
is to get school feeding programs in place. Mr. Tapp
says more countries are now looking for help from
the partnership. "Unfortunately, given the current
global financial climate and the fact that there are
still sixty-seven million kids out of school around
the world, demand for our financing seems to be
increasing rather than decreasing." But many donor
countries are reducing their spending. So he says
the partnership must show them that their money is
being well-spent. He says, "It's very clear that in
the Global Partnership partner countries that you're
seeing more kids getting to school for longer and
for a better education. " And as education improves,
he says, so does the health of a country. For VOA
Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
