In 2018, UNESCO proclaimed 24 January as International Education Day. Today, five years later, at ProFuturo we continue to celebrate a key date for our digital education programme. The main objective of this commemoration is to remind society of the vital role that education plays in global peace and development of the vital role that education plays in global peace and development, in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Investing in people, prioritising education
This year’s slogan and actions ‘Investing in people, prioritising education’ propose urgent action on education. “We call for prioritising education as an accelerator of sustainable development. Without the guarantee of inclusive, equitable and quality education, we can hardly aspire to the resolution of the major global challenges we face,” confirms Magdalena Brier, CEO of ProFuturo.
On this 5th anniversary of the event, the celebration of International Education Day aims to build on the global momentum generated by the United Nations Summit on Transforming Education in September 2022, which ProFuturo had the opportunity to take part in. The aim? To maintain strong political mobilisation around education and chart the way to translate global commitments and initiatives into action.
Digital education as a driver of development
At ProFuturo, we have been working since 2016 to narrow the education gap through digital education and for six years now we have been committed to the transformative power of e-ducation and the achievement of the SDG 4 targets.
“We have been able to observe how, in different geographical locations, the existence of a digital classroom has led to significant changes such as a decrease in school drop-out and absenteeism rates, an increase in motivation to go to school and pay attention in class, and an improvement in children’s digital skills, their teachers and their families, which are indisputably necessary for citizenship,” says Magdalena.
We are bringing the year 2022 to a close in which we have reached 7.2 million children worldwide and 385,000 teachers. In this way, we will start 2023 with 27 million children and 1.3 million teachers benefiting from our digital education programme over the almost 7 years that our digital education programme has been running.
While the figures remain alarming, taking the action advocated by #InternationalEducationDay this year is crucial: “Our future depends on human talent and we must invest in it. Putting education at the top of the agenda means investing in people, in equality, in justice, in sustainability, in peace and, without fear of exaggeration, in everything worth fighting for.
