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Will you strive for justice and peace among all people?

Improved education and poverty reduction go hand in hand

In Honduras, poverty drives many children to the streets to scavenge for edible garbage, to the sweatshops and the fi elds for cheap manual labor, and sells some children for sexual exploitation. Studies show that education is one of the most effective ways to combat poverty, and the church must do everything in its power to educate the 113 million children in the developing world who are likely never to set foot in a school.

The connection between education and poverty reduction is well documented. Education reduces deprivation and vulnerability; it helps lift earning potential, expands labor mobility, promotes the health of parents and children, reduces child mortality, and affords the disadvantaged a voice in society and the political system. Recent research shows that education also fosters improvements in the quality of social institutions and communities.

A strategy paper by the World Bank notes that “nations in which most of the population is literate and all children complete at least a basic education have higher quality institutions, stronger democratic processes, and, as a consequence, more equitable developmental policies.”

A child’s eyes twinkle because she imagines a world replete with things that astonish her and a future that is good; but the harsh realities often rob her of everything, including her imagination. Always having had a world that is against them, many cannot imagine a better world. Education fi ghts this. At the least, education gives people the basic knowledge so they will know when others exploit them; and at its best, it allows people to envision a just world and their role in building it.

The Anglican Communion has had a long involvement in education in the developing world; Anglican missionaries built schools and hospitals everywhere they went. Despite the negative role that they might have played in the past, these schools are now an integral part of the education systems of many developing countries. In Kenya, for instance, the number of religious schools established was so extensive that at Kenya’s independence in 1963, missionary schools were the main means of public education, according to a 1996 article in the Journal of Church and State. In Honduras, the Episcopal Church’s numerous bilingual schools provide top-quality instruction unavailable through its strike-prone public school system.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ONE/

http://er-d.org/programs_36756_ENG_HTM.htm

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/30703_1700_ENG_HTM.htm

http://www1.worldbank.org/education/

globaleducationreform/pdf/Education%20Chapter%20Sou

rcebook.pdf

http://e4gr.org