THEMBI'S SPEECH

[isaac]

Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my singular honour and privilege to stand before this esteemed gathering to deliver a speech on behalf of the Young Feminist In Action on this occasion where we are going to deliberate on how to combat the challenges of illiteracy and its impact on society.

Sixty years ago education was set as a basic human right for every person, and enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948.

Since then world leaders have made many promises to make this right a reality. The most significant of these, is the setting of the Education for All targets, at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. These targets are set for 2015:
• Expand early childhood care and learning
• Provide free and compulsory primary Education for All
• Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults
• Increase adult literacy by 50%
• Achieve gender parity by 2005, and gender equality by 2015
• Improve the quality of education.
180 countries signed up to make these goals happen, by putting policies and finances in place so that everyone no matter what their circumstances would have an education. The richest countries pledged to help make Education for All a reality, by providing aid to the poorest countries to help them do so.

These goals were also incorporated into the UN Millennium Development Goals which were also set in 2000 for 2015. Of these eight goals two focus on education:
• Ensure that all boys and girls complete primary schooling by 2015.
• Eliminate gender disparities in primary education by 2005 and at all levels by 2015.
Progress towards these goals is painfully slow, and much stands to be done if Education for All is to be achieved. 94 countries missed the goal of getting an equally number of girls in boys into school by 2005.
• In order to reach the goal of everyone having a primary education by 2015, 75 million children need to start school by 2009.
• The world's poorest countries are still waiting for $9 billion from the world's richest countries that's needed to pay for all children to get educated.
• To pay for Education for all $16 billion is needed.
• An additional 18 million more teachers are needed if every child is to get a quality education.
Everyone deserves a quality education... yet right now 75 million children and 774 million adults are missing out.
It's the world's poorest who are missing out on an education today. And it's the world's poorest who stand the most to gain if they only had the chance to learn.

Education is imperative to tackling poverty. When individuals have the chance to learn basic life and literacy skills, economies grow faster and poverty rates decline. When people go to school, they are able to eventually earn more money and support their families
• A single year of primary school increases the wages people earn later in life by 5-15% for boys and even more for girls.
• For each additional year of secondary school, an individual's wages increase by 15-25%.
• No country has ever achieved continuous and rapid economic growth without first having at least 40% of its adults able to read and write.

The gains made in education, are a sign that the goals are possible. The world has the know-how, and resources to ensure everyone has an education. Yet the progress is still far too slow: at current rates the education goals will not be met in the next 100 years, let alone by 2015.

As a custodian of educating young women and the youth and an agent to speak openly against illiteracy, the Young Feminist finds it necessary to develop strategies to fight against illiteracy in our society.
In the initial stages of our operation, we experienced a number of setbacks, which adversely affected our performances and expectations.

Deficiencies in timing have been the principal issue, but lower than expected co-operation and commitment have also contributed to the shortfall.
The net results was that, our operation saw significantly short of budget expectations and it was not surprising that this led to considerable concern of Women Business Center Management Board.

This development nearly led to the postponement of the initiative. It is even sad to note that, some of our valuable team members were lost in the process.
However, it is now apparent that the Management of Women Business Center is coming to grips with the difficulties and managing the initiative towards achieving the expected outcomes.

It is even more pleasing to note that more and more young women are responding to the call and the successive plan record of expectation is set to exceed for the first time ever.
The nearly indications are encouraging and we appear to have the potential to achieve our goals and expectations.
On behalf of the Young feminist in Action Team, we would like to extend our warm gratitude to the management of Women Business Center, University of the Western Cape, the World Pulse, Sukuma Afrika, Luciana (Romanian journalist), ArtAidArt, AWID, the African Social Entrepreneurs Network, One globe, and all sundry for putting up their massive weight behind the Young feminist Team.

Thank you.

[Vuyo]

Whooooooooooooooooow! What a great speech! I'm so sorry I've missed out and hope I'll be part of the team next time. One our core objectives is to ensure that education, is the order of the day. Keep the fire burning Women Business Center.