Saturday 16 November 2013

Education For All Conference 2013

'Education for All (EFA) day' was a day spent educating hundreds of thousands of children all across the UK about the barriers that so many face in trying to get what is simply their right, their education. It was a great success and in our EFA a man from Oxfam came and spoke to our students in more detail as to the problems concerning education in countries like Uganda.

Due to the success of EFA day, the organisers decided that the most proactive schools should be invited up to London, and to the National Union of Teachers' (NUT) headquarters, to be involved with sharing ideas for future EFA days. As we are the young ambassadors, we were invited to speak about everything we had done since undertaking our role, however our jobs would have been a lot harder if we had not had the support of our Global Campaigners, https://twitter.com/GCampaigners .  Therefore we decided to invite Jade Wardle and Iona Spencer-Dingle to speak about all of their own achievements, including their visit to parliament on Malala Day.  We first started with our life changing, fact finding mission to Delhi where we gained bounds of knowledge as to the barriers that children face in India whilst they try to fight for what they know they are allowed. We then moved through all we have done since India, from our speech at the NUT, to our own EFA day and right up until our latest engagement, a meeting with Lynne Featherstone MP (the Undersecretary of State for the Department For International Development).

After our presentation, and the presentation of another school who have made a partnership with a school in Nepal, we began the organised break out sessions. Three of the six schools went to their stalls, which had information about all their campaigning ideas and success, and prepared to present to the three other schools who were allowed to walk around from stall to stall gaining information for the development of their campaigns. Then, after thirty minutes, it all switched around with the schools who were browsing returning to their tables and the other schools becoming the browsers. From these sessions we gained invaluable information for us to develop our campaign and we're sure that you will be seeing us use it ion the future.

The day was, as already said, a great success and a time that we will not forget as we met and made friends wit so many inspirational people, like last years Young Ambassadors who are still going strong and campaigning for the goal shared by so many, Education for ALL!

We'd like to thank Jade and Iona for coming with us, the Steve Sinnott Foundation for organising the day, the other schools who attended for giving us so many ideas and of course Mrs Hickman for her continued support and organisation to make all our visits off site possible.