Can you imagine if you or a large number of your friends had to drop out of school before graduating? For most people in the developed?world, the answer to this question would be a simple ¡°no¡±.? But the reality is that globally, 1 in 5 adolescent girls is currently not in school.
Vivian Onano, a young activist originally from rural Kenya did see many of her friends drop out of school along the way. Some of them got married, and others didn¡¯t finish because of financial or cultural concerns.
¡°My two brothers and I were raised by a single mum who did not have a stable source of income,¡± Vivian said. ¡°But my mother made sure that I went to school. In fact, I was the only girl from my village who graduated from university.¡±
Mirna Fernandez, a 25-year-old activist from Bolivia also knows some girls who dropped out of their school, most often because they got pregnant. But according to her, the high number of girls dropping out of school ¡°doesn¡¯t make any sense¡±. ¡°Girls more than boys will sustain a family and will take care of the next generation, so why shouldn¡¯t I go to school?¡± she asked.
Worldwide, 62 million girls of primary and secondary school-age are not in school. This number adds to the fact that most of the 700 million people who are illiterate are women. Patience Stephens, Special Advisor on Education at UN Women, says the problem mostly revolves around poverty.
¡°Poverty is number one,¡± Ms. Stephens said. ¡°Poverty meaning the ability to pay those school fees. And more importantly, the ability to supplement for what families lose because the girls have gone to school.¡±
According to youth themselves, girls are not prioritized enough when it comes to education: ¡°I think that is because a lot of people don¡¯t see potential in girls,¡± 19-year old Paulina Wojciechowska said. ¡°They are seen more as the care givers,¡± Kadijatou Diallo added. ¡°And so between going to school or caring for their homes and helping their families, people prioritize helping their families more. So girls are discouraged from going to school.¡±
Even if these girls end up staying in school, it does not always mean that their education will be equal to that of boys and young men, as teaching materials and in-classroom culture are often very male-centered, according to Ms. Stephens. ¡°Even when they do stay, the attention that they get is going to be biased by social and cultural factors that cause them to graduate with perhaps fewer skills and with lower earning power than boys that they have been to school with,¡± she said.
Luckily, youth around the world have a pretty good idea of how they can contribute to a solution of this problem, no matter how unfamiliar it may be to them. Yixi Lang recognizes the value of leading by example: ¡°We need to show our potential to our society. Try to show them what we are capable of.¡±
Young people have to be part of this global movement, Henry Ekwuruke, a young activist from Nigeria said.
¡°Just help empower people. Push them to do things they believe in,¡± Elaina Estrin said. ¡°Dream big!¡±
¡°Whether it¡¯s in social media, in organization or in their own school,¡± Kadijatou Diallo added. ¡°Or whether it¡¯s just talking to their friends about it.¡±
Most important on the road to successfully keeping girls in school, however, is stimulating the ambitions of girls themselves, according to Ms. Stephens. ¡°If a girl grows up in an environment where the role models that are around suggest that it¡¯s okay to come out of school after 6th grade or 8th grade, then that¡¯s the attitude she will grow up with.¡±
The Youth Effect, a new monthly web series produced by the UN Webcast, Department of Public Information, in collaboration with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Office of the Secretary-General¡¯s Envoy on Youth, will explore different topics that affects the lives of young people around the world.
A Forum of Experts in the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting will be held on 28-30 April at UN Headquarters in New York.
As part of the project on ¡°Advancing the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) in Pilot Countries¡±, UN DESA’s Statistics Division in collaboration with United Nations Environment Programme, Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Government of Norway is organizing a Forum of Experts on the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting.
The Forum will bring together experts, practitioners and statisticians to discuss the draft guidance document that have been developed as part of the project to complement the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting. The guidance document will provide practical guidance for countries wanting to start testing the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting. The Forum will discuss selected issues related to the delineation of statistical units for ecosystem accounting, the classification of ecosystem services, the measuring and modelling of ecosystem services and ecosystem condition.
A million US dollar grant has been launched by UN DESA, with funding support from the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), to promote leadership and innovative practices in energy for sustainable development.
In an interview with Derrick Mbatha of UN Radio, the Director of DESA¡¯s Division for Public Administration and Development Management, Mr. Juwang Zhu, said the idea of the grant came from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012.
He explained that many governments felt that while encouraging progress had been made, best practices and lessons learned in promoting energy for sustainable development were not being disseminated. The new grant seeks to help address this issue by funding future capacity development activities in this area. It will be awarded to an individual, institution or partnership based on past and current achievements. Applications are accepted until 30 April 2015.
Listen to the UN Radio interview to find out more about the grant:
The 2015 ECOSOC e-discussion took place between 17 February and 17 March. The e-discussion engaged stakeholder groups, experts, practitioners and policy-makers from various regions in a global dialogue on specific aspects of the 2015 ECOSOC theme of ¡°Managing the transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the sustainable development goals: What it will take¡±.
The e-discussion consisted of four concurrent thematic windows to focus the discussion, each led by an expert moderator and supported by a shadow facilitator from UN DESA, UNDP or the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The thematic windows included: i) policy choices and mindset change for an integrated agenda; ii) adaptation by institutions and structures; iii) partnerships for the implementation of the SDGs and the post-2015 agenda; and iv) follow-up and review.
Participants in the thematic window on policy choices and mindset change acknowledged the importance of integrated approaches and ¡®triple wins strategies¡¯ as entry-points for scaling up and mainstreaming sustainable development at the core of policy making processes and of adopting a bottom-up approach by including local communities in decision-making processes and in implementation. They also stressed the importance of actively engaging traditional and religious leaders, women, and youth at all levels, integrating their concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes.
In the discussion on institutions, participants stressed that it will take a significant shift in the mindsets and attitudes of individuals and groups, as well as all countries, to modify and create new institutional frameworks to effectively drive the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs. The transition will need a change in norms, rules, regulations and even laws that govern the way that government ministries and departments work together. New institutions should be anticipatory, participatory, networked, coordinated and should not react through a ¡®silo¡¯ approach.
Participants discussing partnerships highlighted the need to: clearly define the meaning of and roles in partnerships; establish a mechanism for civil society to participate in the monitoring of implementation of the SDGs; partner with local organizations to benefit from community-level knowledge of development; and take account of different national circumstances and respect national policies and priorities.
Under follow-up and review, participants put forward a wide range of suggestions, including the establishment of regional and global UN monitoring processes; the need for multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder trainings to build awareness of sustainable development issues and their impact; and the importance of ensuring the comparability of data.
The expert moderators had high praise for the quality and substance of the contributions from the participants. Mr. John-Mary Kauzya, Chief, Public Administration Capacity Branch, DPADM, and moderator of the window on adaptation by institutions and structures, said ¡°This has been a very enlightening reading for me¡fascinating discourse on people, ideologies, values, norms, markets, technology, even philosophical contributions, politics, human rights, and so many others.¡±
Ms. Anita Sharma, Senior Director of MDG Initiatives, UN Foundation, and moderator of the window on partnerships, called the discussion ¡°a very thoughtful month¡± and thanked the participants for the ¡°lively and informative conversation.¡± She said that she looks forward to ¡°continuing to think about the topics and questions raised during this dialogue in the months leading up to September and the launch of the SDGs.¡±
Over the one month period, the e-discussion generated a significant amount of interest, with more than 750 contributions from over 170 countries.
A million US dollar grant has been launched by UN DESA, with funding support from the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), to promote leadership and innovative practices in energy for sustainable development.
The 2015 ECOSOC e-discussion took place between 17 February and 17 March. The e-discussion engaged stakeholder groups, experts, practitioners and policy-makers from various regions in a global dialogue on specific aspects of the 2015 ECOSOC theme of ¡°Managing the transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the sustainable development goals: What it will take¡±.