Bishops’ Appeal sees education as a priority area when it comes to funding projects. One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was to ‘achieve universal primary education’. The follow-up Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which many countries have signed up, emphasise quality education. Although more children were attending school by the end of the timescale for the MDGs, often they were in overcrowded classrooms without access to resources or to qualified teachers. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also emphasises education when it includes as one of its rights, ‘the right to go to school and receive free primary education’. Education is the doorway to freedom from the snares of poverty.
Examples of the multi-faceted forms of education funded by Bishops’ Appeal are:
- Vocational training for youths in Sierra Leone where there is a 70% unemployment rate;
- Cashel, Ferns & Ossory Dioceses supporting two women’s literacy projects, one in Ethiopia and one in Democratic Republic of Congo;
- Women’s vocational training in Ghana;
- Teacher training in Uganda;
- Education to prevent gender-based violence in Zambia and Bolivia;
- Literacy training in Pakistan (as once women could write … they could vote).
