The Fierce Urgency of Now – ECW Allocates $15M in Emergency Funds

By PRESS RELEASEApr 3 2020 (IPS-Partners) The Education Cannot Wait Global Fund (ECW) allocates a total of US$15 million in an initial series of emergency grants for the rapid delivery of holistic education services to protect and support vulnerable children and youth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 16 countries/emergency contexts. These girls and boys are already impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement, natural disasters and protracted crises. An additional series of grants to support the response in other crisis-affected countries will be released shortly and reach partners in-country in the coming days. “1.5 billion children are out of school. The majority of the 31 million children uprooted from their homes today – including over 17 million internally displaced, 12.7 million refugees and 1.1 million asylum seekers – are at great risk,” said Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, Chair of Education Cannot Wait’s High-level Steering Group and UN Special Envoy for Global Education. “Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of ‘the fierce urgency of now,’ and the crisis for these vulnerable children is right now and that is why ECW is making its full emergency reserves available immediately.” This emergency allocation supports the United Nations coordinated $2 billion global humanitarian appeal launched on 25 March to fight COVID-19 in many of the world’s most vulnerable countries – already wracked by crises and now doubly-impacted by COVID-19. As the pandemic co...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Education Health Source Type: news