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We’re getting close to graduation time. Unfortunately, not every student will graduate. Sadder still, millions never even start. Worldwide, 72 million school age children are not in school for no other reason than that they are poor.

Here are two stories — both true — one tragic, the other amazing.

Mark Kwadwo, a 6-year-old, was sold by his desperate mother to a fisherman on Lake Volta in Ghana as an indentured servant because she could not afford to feed him, and she didn’t want to see him starve. He will never go to school.

Recently, a member of a U.S. non-profit organization visited the one-room home of two young girls and their father in the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

The visitor saw arithmetic problems written in chalk on the walls and asked the girls why. The girls’ faces beamed, and excitedly they explained that because they had no paper that’s how they did their homework. These two girls, although poor, were very happy because they could go to school. One of the girls aspires to be a doctor, the other a teacher. Because of education, they have a way out of poverty.

In this country, it is hard to imagine that children cannot go to school simply because they are poor. But in the developing world, being poor is a hard fact of life. Almost two billion people live on less than $2 a day. Most children living in such families have to go to work, or they and their families will starve.

In 2000, President Bush and other world leaders agreed to the Millennium Development Goals, the second of which is to provide basic elementary school education to all the world’s children by the year 2015. Now the United States has an opportunity to do its part to make this goal a reality. The Education For All Act is a bill pending in Congress that calls for the United States to develop a comprehensive plan that seeks international cooperation and funds from other donor countries, developing counties, and private donors to insure all children receive a quality basic education. The plan concentrates on those developing countries that have set universal basic education for all their citizens at the forefront of its agenda.

Disadvantaged children, including girls in poor and remote areas, child laborers, the disabled, victims of sex trafficking, orphans, and those negatively impacted by HIV/AIDS will be given priority attention. An ambassador-level position at the U.S. Department of State will be established to oversee the plan.

The above plan is well drafted and coordinated, and it deserves to be enacted.

For those people who believe we should focus on our own internal needs and not get involved in problems on the other side of the world, let’s put this in perspective.

The entire amount spent for humanitarian foreign aid, such as education and medicine is less than 1 percent of the Federal Budget. So, if this bill were passed, it would amount to a pittance when compared to the whole picture, but its effect would be enormous in the amount of good it would do.

Poverty is a root cause of many of the world’s problems — war, violence, crime, prostitution, disease. This bill, aimed at supporting education for all children, is one of the best, most cost-effective ways to break the cycle of poverty throughout the world. Let’s give it a chance. We live in a great country. Each one of us has a right to make our voices heard.

Please urge your U.S. senator and member of Congress to fully support the Education for All Act and to bring it to the floor for a vote.

It will take you a few minutes, but your action may allow more little girls in Kenya and the Mark Kwadwos of the world to go to elementary school, and maybe high school, and who knows, maybe even university.

  

 David Schubert is a volunteer for RESULTS which is a non-profit, bipartisan organization working to create the political will to end poverty. Their Web site is www.results.org.