Eduction India -- -- -- A Hope For Poor Children

Why EducationEducation has a far reaching impact on a number of levels

• Helps create equality among citizens, without regard to origin, gender or religion.
• Helps to establish better nutritional, healthcare and sanitation practices. More specifically, education leads to an increased awareness about reproductive health and the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other endemic diseases.
• Enables people, particularly women, to exercise power of choice within the family.
• Promotes awareness about the dangers of various social evils, crime, terrorism, drug addiction and child labour.
• Helps to increase productivity, employment and economic growth.

There are a couple of critical issues we must address in discussing the Universalisation of Elementary Education.

It is by no means the fault of India's 50 million out-of-school children that they are not being provided education.

However, if we do not provide them with even the most basic education, what will these 50 million children do in the year 2010?

Prof. Amartya Sen on the importance of education in a nation's future:

"...extensive empiricle studies have demonstrated the critical role of basic education in economy and social development in Europe and North America as well as in Asia, Africa nad Latin America..."

"The concentration on education was responsible, to a large extent, for the nature and speed of Japan's economic and social progress..."

"Education has intrinsic importance; the capability to read and write can deeply influence one's quality of life. Also, an educated population can make better use of democratic opportunities than an illiterate one..."

"Women's empowerment through literacy tends to reduce child mortality and very significantly decrease fertility rates..."

-- Prof.Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate (Extracts taken from his article 'To Build A Country Build A Schoolhouse," NY Times, 27 May 2002).