NEWSINTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

British students have rallied for weeks, protesting cuts to higher education that would raise tuition beyond what many can afford. College students, high school students and even elementary school students have gotten involved, standing up for their ability to get an affordable education.

"We are no longer that generation that doesn't care, we are no longer that generation to sit back and take whatever they give us. We are now the generation at the heart of the fight back," said 15 year-old protester Rodney Owen McCarthy.

But because some of the protests have gotten violent, with some police even being accused of assaulting protesters, London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner is proposing martial law be enforced and students not be allowed to protest.

"It is one of the tactics we will look at and something we will keep under review, and if we think it is the right thing to do then we will do it," said Sir Paul Stephenson.

Students all over Britain are organizing against proposed funding cuts for higher education which would lead to tuition hikes for college kids. And when we say students, we mean all kinds of students. Not just those at a university, but even those in elementary school.

"We'll never give in," says Tommy Jackman, a 12-year old London student who's participating in protests against tuition hikes.

Thousands of school children of all ages will be walking out of their classes in support of university students. And those college students are protesting too. British university, University College London, tried to get a court order to evict students who are leading a peaceful sit in at one of their campus buildings, but the judge denied it.

Even though students like Tommy are a ways from college, they understand that any cuts to education affect them too.

"We're told in school nothing is more important than education — we're not going to stop until we get what we need," he said.

His mom says he's not just being riled up by older kids. He really understands the impact of these cuts on his future.

"Tommy knows what is happening, and how it is going to affect his future so it's very good he is getting his point across," said Emma Jackman.

A study by the Universities and College Union said government funding cuts will seriously impact many British colleges and universities. Teaching budgets are expected to be cut as much as 80%. The cuts will mean huge rises in tuition for British students, as well as whole subjects and departments being cut, like the arts and humanities.

With so many countries passing new "austerity" measures, many might say these funding cuts are necessary. But when you cut funding to education, it also means cutting off your nation's future. British students like Tommy Jackman know they need to be well educated for themselves and their country to succeed. If a 12 year-old is smart enough to see that long-term, certainly politicians, whose job it is to look out for the interests of the nation, should be able to.

We at Change.org love to recognize exciting social justice campaigns where people ban together to create change in their communities. We stand with all the students of Britian and groups like Student Voice and hope that the government reconsiders cuts that would stifle the educational opportunities of its young people.

Photo credit: Andrew Moss

Admit it: you've always wanted to score a spot on Oprah's Favorite Things, the annual episode where the daytime queen showers her audience with lavish gifts.  Her final Favorite Things episode was no different. Her audience members reacted with shrieks, tears and, in one case, "I'm gonna drop dead" to a diamond watch, a seven-day Caribbean cruise, a 3D TV and various and sundry other presents.

At least one college student in her audience, however, is putting Oprah's Favorite Things to work on eBay to help displaced Haitian college students continue their education in the United States. How's that for making change?

College of William and Mary student Danny Yates, 19, is the founder of the Hinche Scholars Project, a project that is helping Haiti rebuild its higher education system. It links the town of Hinche, Haiti with Barber-Scotia College, a historically black college in Concord, North Carolina, and the I Have A Dream Foundation in Richmond, Virginia.  Eight "Hinche Scholars" -- Haitian students whose educations were cut short due to the devastating earthquake -- are continuing their education in the U.S. After they graduate, they plan on returning to their home country in order to be leaders in the recovery process.

It's the year 2010, and humans have done some pretty incredible things. We've built the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt. We've dug deep into the Earth and set foot on the Moon. In America, we've even passed health care reform. (Ba-dum-ching.)

What haven't we done? Built toilets and sanitation systems for the 1.2 billion people who have to pee and poop in the open, polluting drinking water and spreading disease. In terms of saving the world, solving the world's water crisis would be a real gamechanger, says David Trouba of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.

"Solving the sanitation crisis would be a more momentous accomplishment for humanity than the building of the Great Wall, the Apollo Moon Missions or the construction of the Pyramids," he said recently.

Ugandan teen Sam Bwayo spent three years in a Kenyan refugee camp, speaks three languages and has gotten good grades at Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego, Calif. 

His dream school is the University of California, Riverside, where he wants to study medicine. Sam plans to attend medical school in the U.S. and return to his native Uganda as a doctor.

But Sam - who speaks English, Swahili and Luganda - is running into red tape as he applies to the University of California system. The refugee camp where he studied Swahili didn't give him a transcript, and without official paperwork, he can't prove his fluency in Swahili or Luganda. There's no SAT II test for either language.

Although he's working to find an expert to certify him as fluent, there's no guarantee that Sam will be deemed eligible to apply to UC Riverside, even though he's taken college-prep classes.

"I'm stuck in the middle," Sam told the Voice of San Diego. "I don't know exactly what to do right now. I'm done with high school -- but am I going to move forward or back?"

The Equality Alliance San Diego is working with students like Sam who are struggling to apply to the University of California and California State University. The San Diego Unified school district is making changes in order to ensure that its graduation requirements match up with college requirements. But Sam, whose guidance counselor told him he didn't need to take foreign language classes, is stuck in limbo.

Talk about a dismal report card. The Global Campaign for Education has just released a list of the world's worst places to be a school child - and Somalia tops the list at No. 1, where only one out of every ten children are enrolled in primary school.

Africa dominates the list. Eritrea -- a country in northeast Africa -- and Haiti are No. 2 and No. 3 respectively. Haiti's education system is still reeling from the earthquake; Haiti's government operates only 10 to 20 percent of primary schools.

Worldwide, 69 million children go without school - missing out on access to literacy, job skills, social skills, better health and improved finances. And funding continues to be out of whack - in Afghanistan, if one percent of the money spent on U.S.-led military activity went to schools, every child could complete primary school.

Right now, world leaders are meeting in New York to discuss the United Nations Millenium Development Goals -- large, big-thinking goals that U.N. leaders agreed in 2000 to make reality within 15 years. One of those goals was primary education for every boy and girl by 2015. While many countries have made progress -- Tanzania has enrolled 3 million more students since 2000 -- there is still a long way to go.

The report, which is sponsored by international organizations including Oxfam and Save The Children, makes recommendations for poor and rich countries alike. Among the recommendations: Rich countries, like the U.S., should target education aid to countries facing the biggest challenges -- including the countries where girls are the most severely disadvantaged.

Our recent coverage of Haiti's education system was a bit gloomy; and having just spent six weeks volunteering there, I was fairly saddened by what I saw

But here's some hope that I wasn't aware of: The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (comprised of Haitian and international officials) has big plans for the country, including a revamping of the education system. While not designed to be publicly-run, per se, a new system, infused with hope and foreign aid, will nevertheless be evaluated, accredited, and partially funded by the government.

Sounds like this might create — at last! — something like greater access to education, at the very least. According to a New York Times editorial, about half of the funding for the first five-year phase and some of the program design will come from, among other entities, the Inter-American Development Bank.

I spent the last six weeks volunteering for Hands On Disaster Response (HODR) in Leogane, Haiti (a city west of Port-au-Prince that sustained even greater damages than the capital), clearing rubble, building schools and shelters, working with kids, and documenting it all as best I could.

Much of what I saw was heartening, but so much more was heartbreaking: abject poverty, hunger, squalor, massive destruction that has yet to be addressed, political corruption, deforestation, and a pervasive culture of foreign-aid handouts and projects that, in some cases, cripple Haitians rather than empower them.

As someone who believes in the power of education to create opportunities and to lift people out of poverty, what I learned about the Haitian education system (or lack thereof) was also pretty painful.

The numbers I've heard and read vary slightly, but the ballpark number of schools destroyed in January's earthquake runs up to 5,000. Even with financial resources, this is a lot of rubble to remove. One school that I helped HODR clear the rubble for, Nicole Kindergarten, is still functioning only because the school's director managed to keep another job and shovel all of his savings as well as donations from friends and family living abroad into pitching a tarp, paying a pittance to the teachers, and giving his small charges a little food.

I spoke with NGO project coordinators, school principals, teachers, and students, and here's what I learned about Haitian education:

Greg Mortenson of Three Cups of Tea fame has been giving the government a lesson in cross-cultural communication. After high-ranking members of the military reached out to him, Mortenson has found himself participating in meetings and helping military officers understand how to effectively work with Afghan and Pakistani elders and society leaders.

Mortenson, a pioneer in girls’ education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that he believes the only path to success in that area of the world is through education, specifically women’s education. He believes that this is the only long-term solution for the region that has any promise of breaking the cycles set in place by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

It is a positive sign that the military is choosing to reach out to people who both understand the local cultures and who believe that education, not war, is the key to success and prosperity. This is also in line with the White House’s recently released updated strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan in which the importance of promoting a “vibrant civil society” is highlighted. Without advancement of educational resources, it will not be possible to achieve this goal.

Before he became a United Nations human rights advocate, Chris Mburu was a bright student in rural Kenya, headed for a career picking coffee beans. A Swedish preschool teacher named Hilde Back decided to sponsor him through a scholarship program and with $15 a month, paid for his primary and secondary education.

Chris went on to attend Harvard Law School and work for the United Nations. But he never forgot the woman who helped pave the way for his success. A new documentary by Jennifer Arnold, A Small Act, follows Chris as he reconnects with Hilde and tells her he has created the Hilde Back Education Fund within Kenya to sponsor more poor schoolchildren who have the potential to succeed. The film also follows three children who can't afford to pay school fees and are vying for scholarship money from the fund. Secondary school can cost less than $10 a week in Kenya, but families picking coffee might earn $1.50 a day - making school an impossible dream for many students.

"How can we change the world? Where are you going to start?" Chris asks during the film. "You can't change the entire world as a whole, so sometimes it's just as good to help one child."