Funding, Action and Opportunity at the Education World Forum

Safe to Learn

From 20 to 21 January, the Education World Forum gathered delegates representing over two-thirds of the world’s population to debate future education policy, ideas and challenges. An issue critical to those discussions was violence – and how to prevent and respond to that violence for students across the globe.

Today, two in three young people worry about violence in and around schools, and half the world’s teens experience peer violence in the classroom. Physical, sexual and psychological violence can be found in every country across the world, often forcing students to stay home or drop out to avoid violence.

At last year’s Education World Forum, the Safe to Learn initiative was introduced to education ministers from 120 countries around the world to mitigate that situation. Safe to Learn is a five-year initiative that brings together a coalition of actors to end violence in and through schools.

Today, End Violence Executive Director Dr Howard Taylor was able to showcase all that’s happened since, including the creation of a new funding window targeting school-based safety.

In one year, Safe to Learn has expanded to include 14 technical partners* – a powerful group of organisations leveraging each other’s strengths, expertise, and networks to end violence against children in and through schools.  These partners have developed a roadmap, which sets out practical actions for organisations to take, both individually and collectively, to end violence against children at the global, regional and national levels.

And, since the launch of the initiative, 12 governments have endorsed Safe to Learn’s Call to Action, a framework that sets out what needs to happen to end violence in schools, once and for all. These countries include Cambodia, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda. The Safe to Learn initiative has also taken on a brand-new component: funding support through the End Violence Fund.

At the Education World Forum, Dr Taylor announced that the Government of Switzerland has joined forces with the United Kingdom to invest in making schools safer for children. Collectively, their $9 million to the End Violence Fund will support countries to help them deliver on their commitments to the Safe to Learn Call to Action.

The objectives of End Violence and Safe to Learn reinforce the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s approach towards protecting children from violence. It is critical that education and child protection strategies and approaches work together to keep children safe and deliver better educational outcomes, which is why they are key components of Switzerland’s Humanitarian Aid operational concept on protection as well as its Education Strategy.

This support will be channelled through a new funding window, which is currently accepting proposals from targeted applicants. This call will support evidence-based, gender-sensitive approaches to addressing violence in and through schools in Nepal, South Sudan and Uganda. Successful proposals will be announced in the second quarter of 2020.

“Schools have the potential to be transformative in promoting positive social norms and gender equality,” Dr Taylor said. “But without making schools safer for children, millions of children will continue to miss out on opportunities to grow, learn and thrive.”

Learn more about Safe to Learn.

* The growing coalition behind Safe to Learn includes the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the United Nations Girl’s Education Initiative (UNGEI), the Civil Society Forum to End Violence against Children, the World Bank, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the Global Business Coalition for Education, Global Affairs Canada, the World Health Organisation, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, and the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

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