This report is the case for investment for the Australian Government to invest $24 million over 3 years in Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN Global Fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
3 reasons for Australia to invest in ECW:
- Responding to climate emergencies in the Indo-Pacific: ECW’s new Strategic Plan includes a core focus on responding to the impact of climate change on education. Australia can play a leading role in shaping this work, ensuring that global funding reaches children impacted by emergencies in its priority countries affected by climate-induced disasters across the Indo-Pacific.
- Multilateral leadership & visibility: Australia was a founding donor to ECW in 2015, helping the fund to become the high-impact global public good it is today. Australia also invested $10 million in 2017-2020. Investing in ECW again means protecting Australia’s original investment, delivering global impact, and standing shoulder to shoulder with global allies to keep children learning in the most complex crises.
- Girls’ education & reaching those furthest behind: ECW funding is focused on the most complex, protracted, and underfunded crises, and ECW’s interventions seek out those most likely to fall behind within those crises: girls, children with disabilities, and forcibly displaced populations.
To find out more, you can also read our report From crisis to classroom, which highlights the impact of emergencies and protracted crises on children and young people’s education, with a focus on the Pacific.
