Even though we never ended up making one, I think an app could have helped a little bit in this struggle for education to all. There are many ways an app could help with this but the way I would most likely do it is try to make some fun game that has a built in way to donate to the cause, maybe even for advantages in the game. That way it could reach more people than just my small circles and it could raise money for access to education.

With the help of an existing organization we could build schools in poor places and find teachers to run them. We could even take some of the promising students and give them scholarships to college to encourage others to seek education and help promising students that don’t have the means to go to college.

I learned a lot about the issue of access to education. It’s an issue that’s largely ignored because it’s either deemed as not important or people simply don’t understand the severity of it, even in our homeland. Learning about the difficulties that so many children face when trying to get education has made me reflect more deeply on my own schooling and school as a whole. School should absolutely be offered to everyone in all countries, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get to that level.

1. There are many basic human rights. Some of them are access to food / water / shelter, access to education, freedom of religion, etc. Education is considered a basic human right.

2) Although it is a right, not everyone has access to education, even to the degree that it’s listed in the basic human rights. Many people in poverty aren’t given an opportunity to go into school.

3) Article 26 of the universal declaration means that everyone should have access to at least primary education, and that it should be free. Unfortunately, many poor countries and just poor communities don’t have access to education, even though they should.

I can’t imagine having the same future I see now if I had never gotten a formal education. There’s no way I’d be going off to college next year or getting the caliber of job that I plan to get. Education is incredibly important because without it, we can’t make the best decisions for us. Not having an education is very limiting.

There have never been any barriers that affected my education because I’m fortunate enough to come from a well enough off family to be able to afford sending the kids to school instead of working or doing housework. There are many barriers to education for people in developing and poor parts of every country, and many of the issues come from a failing government or that the parents aren’t well enough off to send their kids to school.

Knowing more about these issues and the barriers that some family’s have to overcome for education is really mind opening for an American like myself. I’ve seen education as just a fact of life for a long time, but these videos have shown me that it should instead be considered a privilege.

To help education overseas, I’m not in a great position to contribute but I could spread awareness to those that can.

While we were learning about access to education, there were a few things that actually really surprised me. The first one was how much of an issue HIV/AIDS is in other countries. Since they don’t have a proper education for many of their students, more people end up with underaged pregnancies and HIV/AIDS than you would expect. This is kind of a positive feedback loop because if you don’t have education, you or your family is more likely to get HIV/AIDS and if you or your family gets it, you’re more likely to not go to school. It also surprised me that girls are the ones taken out of school most regularly. The number of boys that graduate in these poorer countries is much higher than the number of girls because girls are usually the first ones taken out of school for family emergencies. My response to this was shock. I never knew that there was such a large difference in male / female graduation rates in third world countries. Although I was shocked, I kind of understood once they explained it. It made a lot of sense.

So how do we help?

Well there are many ways that we could help really. As a country and as individuals. One way we could help as a country is spread awareness of this. That could lead to larger fundraisers or even a legislative budget bill that allocates some of our funds to it. That would be a major help in getting people educated over there. The way we could help as individuals is to volunteer! Even if you can’t volunteer, you can always donate. Any contribution is helpful.

I am a student in AP Computer Science A, and this is my WE project. I like to read and play games in my free time. I’m going into engineering in college, and eventually into Law.

“What am I doing here?”

-Jason Rigo