World Vision Honoured to Join Global Campaign for Education Board of Directors

GCE Uganda
Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Founded in 1999 in the lead-up to the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) is a movement of education advocates that has since grown to over 100 national and regional education coalitions and international organisations around the world.

GCE’s wide-reaching membership includes national, regional, and international civil society organisations, teachers’ organisations, parents’ associations, women’s groups, disabled people’s organisations, youth, and student groups, academic and research institutions, and child rights campaigners. World Vision International is an international member of GCE, and many World Vision national offices are members of their respective GCE national education coalitions. In total, GCE encompasses thousands of civil society organisations representing millions of individuals worldwide.

World Vision International is pleased and honoured to announce that we have ascended to the GCE Board of Directors. Tony Baker, WVI Sr. Advisor for External Engagement in Education, will serve alongside Mercedes Mayol Lassalle, President of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, as representatives of the international NGO constituency to increase international coordination with GCE campaigns and advocacy, break down sector siloes to further build the GCE movement, and accelerate progress to address barriers to education faced by the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable children.

World Vision’s strengthened collaboration with the GCE movement comes at a critical moment following the recent United Nations Transforming Education Summit (TES) where World Vision, GCE-US, and the 100 Million youth campaign unified civil society voices with the Three Transformations for Whole-Child Support in Emergencies and Crises Call to Action. The call to action was widely endorsed by nearly 100 organizations and launched in advance in Uganda’s Rhino Refugee Settlement in partnership with WV Uganda, Children’s Parliaments, 100 Million, the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO).

The call from crisis-affected children, young people, student unions, teachers’ organizations, education coalitions, and other organizations successfully prompted the development of the UN TES Education in Crisis Situations Commitment to Action. But harder work lies ahead to ensure that commitments made on the global stage do not become only fantasy for the children and young people they have been promised to. The upcoming Education Cannot Wait High Level Financing Conference in Geneva in February 2023 will be the first global moment following TES for donors, governments, and partners to uphold their commitments to the 222 million crisis-impacted children and young people in need of education support and pledge at least $1.5 billion to Education Cannot Wait. World Vision looks forward to continued collective action with GCE and other allies to make these promises a reality.

___________________________________________________

 

Additional information:

  • Read Tony Baker's full bio