Breakfast with Gordon Brown – a message for the G8 summit

The countdown is on to the G8 summit, being held at Gleneagles, Scotland from July 6-8, when world leaders will decide how best to help the world’s poor. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have spent the last few months making promises of investment, especially in Africa, and Camfed has been advising them of the long term benefits of investing in girls’ education. In January, Camfed representatives from the UK and Ghana met Gordon Brown and Hilary Benn at a breakfast meeting at No.11 Downing Street with Carol Bellamy, Head of UNICEF, and other campaigners from across the world.

Mariama Mohammed, a representative from RAINS, Camfed’s local partner in Ghana, told the Chancellor how she came top of her class despite juggling school work with daily trips to the market to earn money for her uniforms and books. She knows she was lucky because after completing school she went to university, but her own experience makes her work tirelessly for the millions of girls that aren’t so lucky:

“I got a place at University with the help of a scholarship and some money from my senior brother. Once again, I had to work my way through. You could say I was lucky but, Chancellor; girls’ education cannot be based on luck. Every child has the right to education and every child has the potential to contribute back to their community.“

Camfed, as a member of the Global Campaign for Education, the Make Poverty History campaign and the ‘Send My Friend to School’ campaign, has been working to make sure the voices of the millions of children out of school around the world are heard by those with the power to change their at the G8 Summit.