Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

For anyone who was in Oxford last year, the sight of me dashing through the town was not a rare one, regularly late to any one of tutorials, lectures or even the rare social event. I thought I would make something of the regular sweaty sprints, and run around the town one last time.

This half marathon was intended in part as a motivation to sweat out the post-finals pounds (pay money to the fat man to make him run) and I would love it if you could add some real ££ pounds ££ to a much more worthy cause.

Street Child (https://www.street-child.co.uk/) is a major, fast-growing charity of great reputation in development circles, and any money you could generously spare to support their work would be gladly received. They work globally, but much of their work is focussed in sub-Saharan Africa.

Education and the support of young people is something I feel
passionately about – I worked with the charity Students Supporting Street Kids whilst at school and taught abroad in a year out between school and uni, and am currently considering a career in education. Research into the transformative power of education in developing countries has demonstrated some staggering things. Please take time to read just a few lines of the following.

This is the situation:

• 42% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa lived
  on less than $1.90 in 2012.
• Africa is home to 43% of the world’s out of school children. Nearly 29 million children of primary-school age were not in school in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008 – 54% of them were girls.
• Secondary education in Africa is almost universally ‘private’, charging fees.

Education has an impact on wider prosperity:

• Each additional year of secondary school adds 13% to a person’s life earnings, enough to take a family out of poverty.

And a significant impact on the lives of women and their families –
i.e., everyone:

• A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of 5
• If every girl in sub-Saharan Africa completed even just a primary education, the maternal mortality rate would likely decrease by 70%
• A girl who is educated is likely to marry later, live longer, and earn more over the course of her life

Why Street Child?

• Street Child approach the material, economic and cultural barriers to education.
• As well as providing teacher training and materials, they support low income families to lift themselves out of poverty so they can afford costs of educating their children.
• Since 2009 they have supported over 15,000 families through these models and over 90 per cent of those families are still managing to fund their children’s education
• Street Child act by a mixture of
  • supporting local NGOs using their local funding
  • and their more international projects managed by professional development workers

This is to make sure the services they provide are as sustainable as possible, rather than perpetuating reliance on international aid.

That said, there is still a service dedicated charities can
provide – one is fundraising. I hope you will support Street Child.

Links for statistics:

https://www.street-child.co.uk/empowering-families/

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/education-for-all/single-view/news/facts_and_figures_sub_saharan_africas_education_progress/

https://www.peas.org.uk/why-does-peas-exist

https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-education-in-africa/

https://s3.amazonaws.com/one.org/pdfs/ONE_Poverty_is_Sexist_Report_2017_EN.pdf

https://www.worldhunger.org/africa-hunger-poverty-facts-2018/

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