What is SAME?
SAME is the Global Action Week for Education organised by GCE, the Global Campaign for Education. Its main objective is to highlight the importance of making effective changes to enable education around the world, bringing the issue to the attention of the education community, the media, society and, in particular, political representatives in order to find a solution to the problem as soon as possible.
The Billion Voices campaign aims to secure increased funding for public education to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all by raising the voices of the one billion students who have been affected by COVID. This year also focuses on the downside of the pandemic and the effect it has had on education, affecting more than a billion people, hence the origin of the slogan.
The digital exclusion of many vulnerable communities who do not have the resources to be able to do distance learning has been the main problem during these months of being unable to go to school.
What is the forecast for this year?
Not only did last year affect the education sector, but pandemic funding changes are also on the horizon for this year. If education systems were already facing a major crisis in the sector, it has now increased due to COVID-19, facing an even more devastating crisis. Added to this are the challenges around public funding and the increasing pressure on resources for public services, which are resulting in a lower priority for education.
GCE’s (Global Campaign for Education) aim is not only to stop the setbakcs in education funding, but also to secure and guarantee even more and better funding for education. Refat Sabbah, GCE President, added:
“All GCE members around the world,(…) unite in support of the One Billion Voices campaign. GCE reaffirms its commitment to continue to campaign for free, equitable and inclusive publicly funded quality education for all, as well as for the need to improve and closely monitor national and international education funding mechanisms. This includes a call for strong publicly funded education systems that meet internationally agreed education financing benchmarks, (…)”.
How can you help?
You can join the Global Action Week for Education in different ways: the first one is through social networks, with the slogan “A Billion Voices”, giving it visibility from your social networks, you can publish, share or comment publications related to the hashtag #SAME2021 and #OneBillionVoicesForEducation . You can also share experiences that have happened to you or that you know of and give them even more voice in a more artistic way, whether through a poem, a song, painting, etc. Finally, you can also transfer this action to the classroom, doing activities or workshops in class with the students, creating mosaics, documentaries or even banners with the association’s slogans.
