EastEnders star Nina Wadia swaps the postroom for the classroom in world record breaking attempt
Save the Children campaigner and actor Nina Wadia will be going back to her old school to teach a lesson for the Global Campaign for Education
Friday 18 April 2008
Save the Children campaigner and actor Nina Wadia - currently playing the manager of Albert Square's Post Office - will be going back to her old school, Notting Hill and Ealing High School, on Wednesday 23 April at 9am to teach a lesson for the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) - a coalition of charities of which Save the Children is a key member.
GCE is made up of charities united in the belief that education is a basic human right. Nina Wadia will be joining many MPs and celebrities who will be going to local schools to help teach 'the World's Biggest Lesson' - the GCE Send My Friend to School campaign's world record breaking attempt. The World's Biggest Lesson will see thousands of children from over 120 different countries taking part in a simultaneous lesson to raise awareness and push for change for their contemporaries who don't get the chance to go to school. The lesson will help participants to think about why school is so important and what factors stop many children around the world from getting an education .
"I was so shocked when I found out that 72 million children don't get the chance to go to primary school and most of these children are girls," said Nina Wadia. "My daughter is just about to start school and I want other children to have the chance, like her, to get a good education so they can have a bright future. Every child deserves that chance. I'm excited to be taking part in the World's Biggest Lesson and helping to make free education an option for every child, wherever they come from."
Katy Webley, who manages Save the Children's campaign, Rewrite the Future - campaigning to get 39 million children living in conflict-affected countries back into education - said: "Children around the world tell us very clearly why they want to go to school, and what they want to become. More than half the world's out-of-school children are living in countries caught up in conflict or recovering from years of war, and for them their needs are urgent. It is a challenge to us all - governments, donors, teachers - to see these children enter and complete a quality education, in order to break the cycle of poverty and conflict, and in order to give them a chance in life."
The GCE is now the largest education campaign in the world - thousands of children, teachers, child rights activists and NGOs are all working together to make sure world leaders keep the promise they made in 2000 as part of the Millennium Development Goals. They pledged that by 2015 that every child in the world will have completed a primary school education of good quality. So far the campaign's success has seen a drop in the number of children out of school from 100 million to 72 million, and has also motivated millions of children around the world to push for free education for all.
GCE's 2008 campaign, Send My Friend, runs until the end of June and schools are invited to get involved in other ways by creating giant displays with "missing out" cards and inviting their MPs to get creative. For more details and free "Send my friend '08" packs visit http://www.sendmyfriend.org/
