The World's Best Investment: Why Education Matters Now
Street Child, Plan International, and Save the Children invite decision-makers and sector leaders to join a dynamic conversation with voices from across the global education community, including the leadership of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW). The event will convene leading global voices for a frank conversation on what it will take to fully fund the sector.
Education remains one of the most powerful investments we can make in our collective future, yet in a world of overlapping crises and constrained resources, it must continually compete for political attention, financing, and priority. The case for education needs to be strengthened, clearly and on its own terms, and connected to the resources required to deliver it. Two questions belong together: how do we return education to a top tier global development and humanitarian priority, and how do we finance it at scale?
The event takes a wide view of crisis and education, reflecting the mandates of both GPE and ECW. It spans acute emergencies, protracted displacement, and the chronically under-resourced low-income systems where most of the world’s out-of-school children live. Climate shocks, armed conflict, and economic pressure alongside growing inequality are expanding the number of affected children at the same time as the financing to respond is contracting.
Street Child, Plan International, and Save the Children hold representative roles in the sector and engage across the full range of financing mechanisms, including GPE and ECW. Working alongside national governments, local civil society, children and communities in contexts where education is most at risk, we aim to use our reach and representative roles to connect frontline priorities with global decision-makers and convene donors and funds around a shared case for investment.
The event brings the leadership of GPE and ECW into the same conversation, with a shared, sector-wide ask: to fully fund the education sector.