Education Day: Britain appoints Helen Grant as envoy for girls' education

Britain has appointed a new envoy for girls’ education, a topic the government says is a key priority for it as it takes the G7 presidency in 2021 and before a global summit later this year that seeks to mobilise global action to ensure every child can be educated.

Helen Grant, MP for Maidstone and the Weald in southeast England, comes to the role having been a solicitor for 23 years who specialised in protecting women and children from domestic abuse before she came to parliament.

“I am very excited to be appointed by the Prime Minister as the UK Special Envoy for Girls’ Education at such a crucially important time. Empowering women and girls has always been a cause extremely close to my heart,” said Ms Grant, who also is Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s trade envoy to Nigeria.

“I am therefore looking forward to advocating, around the world, for our Prime Minister’s very clear message that 12 years of education is one of the most powerful tools we have available to improve communities across the globe.

“High quality female education empowers women, reduces poverty and unleashes economic growth and it should be an absolute priority for the international community,” she added.

Along with the Global Partnership for Education and Kenya, Britain plans to host a summit later this year to raise billions in new resources to ensure that 175 million children are given educational opportunities in 87 developing countries.

The envoy's role will also include securing support for UK initiatives to enable 40 million more girls in schools in the developing world by 2025.

Boris Johnson's government says improving girls' education around the world is a key priority for it as it takes the G7 presidency in 2021. PA Images via Getty Images

Mr Johnson previously described the number of children out of school worldwide because of Covid-19 “a toll of wasted potential and missed opportunity”.

“It is my fervent belief that educating girls is the simplest and most transformative thing we can do to lift communities out of poverty, end the scourge of gender-based violence and build back better from the pandemic,” he said upon the appointment of Ms Grant.

“It can change the fortunes of not just individual women and girls, but communities and nations.”

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From 2012-2013 Ms Grant was a junior government minister for Justice and Women and Equality.

The drive to raise funds for the Global Partnership for Education will seek $5 billion to support learning in the world’s most vulnerable countries. It will bring together businesses, civil society and governments in an effort to increase investment and propel the action needed so children can access education.

The pandemic has made a bad situation worse. Research before the crisis showed that nine out of 10 children in low income countries were unable to read a simple text by age 10. At its height Covid-19 put 1.6 billion children out of school and there are fears tens of millions will never go back to the classroom. Studies show that the lost wages of children who do not go to school is equivalent to 10 per cent of global income.

Earlier this month Unicef said nearly one in three adolescent girls from the poorest households in the world had never been to school.

“As long as public education spending is disproportionately skewed towards children from the richest households, the poorest will have little hope of escaping poverty, learning the skills they need to compete and succeed in today’s world, and contributing to their countries’ economies,” said UNICEF’s executive director Henrietta Fore.

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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Three ways to get a gratitude glow

By committing to at least one of these daily, you can bring more gratitude into your life, says Ong.

During your morning skincare routine, name five things you are thankful for about yourself.
As you finish your skincare routine, look yourself in the eye and speak an affirmation, such as: “I am grateful for every part of me, including my ability to take care of my skin.”
In the evening, take some deep breaths, notice how your skin feels, and listen for what your skin is grateful for.

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