Education International has joined the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), Action Aid International and Africa Network Campaign on Education for All, for an intensive training programme on education financing in the East African Sub-region.
The training programme, which is being held between 24-28 May in Mombasa, Kenya, is largely based on the Education Financing Toolkit that was produced jointly by EI and Action Aid.
Representatives from Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Uganda will develop their understanding of key issues relating to education financing, and devise national campaigns to advocate for improved financing of education in their respective countries.
This is the first in a series of 11 sub-regional and national workshops to build national coalitions to influence education budgets in the framework of the Parktonian Recommendations, which were agreed between EI and Action Aid in 2006.
At the training, EI is being represented by Executive Board member and General Secretary of the Uganda's National Union of Teachers (UNATU), Teopista Birungi-Mayanja, as well as EI's Coordinator for Africa, Richard Etonu, and the Senior Coordinator of EI's Education and Employment Unit, Dennis Sinyolo.
During her opening remarks, Birungi-Mayanja called on EI affiliates to recognise non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as strategic partners, and to work with these partners in shaping the course of education.
Geofrey Odaga, of the Global Campaign for Education, highlighted the strategic importance of the workshop: "It opens a real opportunity to break new grounds with teachers unions and NGOs working together," he said, before praising EI and Action Aid for producing the Education Financing Toolkit.
David Archer, from Action Aid, explained his organisation's involvement in the initiative, because "finance is a key in the promotion of Education for All". He also noted that 72 million children across the world remain out of school, while 750 million adults are illiterate, and Early Childhood Education is widely neglected.