The Global Partnership for Education is made up of a diverse group of developing countries, bilateral, regional, and international agencies, development banks, the private sector, teachers, and local and global civil society groups. We are all very different and we don’t always agree on everything, but we all fight for a better quality education for every child in the world. ActionAid, one of our most passionate partners, turns 40 this week and we want to take a moment to highlight the wonderful work this organization has been doing over the past 4 decades. ActionAid has been campaigning for years to make sure every child gets a good education. That’s why it joined the Global Partnership.

ActionAid helps fund and support communities to build schools and provides teaching resources, lobbies governments to fulfill their duty to provide education facilities, and campaigns globally to make sure that education stays high on the international agenda. There are still some 61 million children out of school, but the number has dropped by nearly 50 million in the last 10 years. We still have a long way to go, and we will continue to work together. But when I think back about ActionAid’s impressive work, there is always one story that comes to my mind. It’s the story of Kimani from Kenya. ActionAid’s relentless education campaign along with the work of many other organizations finally led to Kenya getting rid of primary school fees in 2003. Kimani, a 85 year old Kenyan man enrolled himself alongside his grandchildren to finally get the education he had missed out on for much too long. In 2005, ActionAid along with the Global Campaign for Education (another one of our partners) brought Kimani to the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals where he advocated for the right to education for all. That’s how ActionAid works. It finds the personal story that helps everyone to understand the global problem.

Another story is the one of Mateenah in Ghana. She joined one of ActionAid’s girl camps and learned that being a girl doesn’t have to stand in the way of her education. Check out Mateenah’s video. 

We are proud to have ActionAid as one of our partners and look forward to strengthening our partnership even further over the next 40 years. Happy Birthday, ActionAid!