With only 50 days until the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, schoolchildren all around the country are joining up to 1GOAL - Send My Friend to School, joining some of the biggest names in football. The 1GOAL campaign is seeking new funding to ensure that the 72 million children currently unable to go to school can receive an education.

1GOAL - Send My Friend to School in the UK, is asking schoolchildren to ‘sign their name for those who can’t’, during the World Cup. Schools are being invited to hold a World Cup assembly to teach pupils about the importance of education and make giant supporter scarves that will be sent in to Downing Street. So far over four thousand schools have signed up to take part in the campaign which hopes to double that number.

Rio Ferdinand said “I believe every child has the right to an education and that’s why I’m supporting 1GOAL and asking football fans around the world to join today.”

The campaign aims to collect 72 million signatures, each one representing a child who is missing out on education, to remind world leaders of the promise made in 2000 to get every child a quality education by 2015. The Global Campaign for Education says that £7billion is needed for primary education alone.

In the UK alone, over 20 players and four Premier League Clubs including: Liverpool, Blackburn. Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland have signed to show their support for the campaign. Players such as Rio Ferdinand, David James; Michael Carrick; Samuel Eto’o; Alessandro Del Piero and legends including Eusebio, Zinedine Zidane, Maldini and Sir Bobby Charlton are backing 1GOAL as are clubs such as Inter Milan, Liverpool, Barcelona and FC Porto.

David Archer, Board Member of the Global Campaign for Education and Head of International Education at ActionAid says: “At this rate of progress there will still be 56 million children out of school in 2015. The quickest way to reach the target would be to abolish user fees and expand the teacher work-force, although school buildings and equipment are also high on the priority list. We estimate that approximately £7 billion per year is needed from international donors for primary education with a further £3 billion to educate all children up to the age of 16. The current amount raised globally by donors stands at just £2.5 billion!

To deliver change on this scale, and within this time period, it also requires developing countries to substantially increase their investment in education, spending at least 20% of their national budget on education, with half of this on primary education.”
Quote here from David Archer Boardb

A free schools pack and loads of classroom resources are available at www.sendmyfriend.org, and 1GOAL is calling on people to add their name to the campaign at www.join1goal.org.

ENDS

For more general information, photographs, case studies and interviews please contact:
Karen Garvin
Karen.garvin@actionaid.org
020 8442 1362/ 07971 576917