History proves that big financing ideas can triumph over seemingly insurmountable global challenges. The global education crisis can seem overwhelming. Today, there are 263 million children and young people throughout the world who are not in school, and 60 million of them live in dangerous emergencies. Fast forward to 2030, and our world could be one where more than half of all children—800 million out of 1.6 billion—will lack basic secondary-level skills. Almost all of them will live in low- and middle-income countries.
What’s more, many of those children will never have the chance for an education at all; others who do attend school will drop out after only a few years. Their job prospects will be poor—their likelihood of becoming the entrepreneurs who will drive the next stage of global growth even more uncertain.
This is a prediction of course—not a done deal by any means—and yet many low- and middle-income country leaders fear that this grim possibility will become their reality. They understand that lack of quality education will leave their countries unable to gain economic ground or improve the well-being of their citizens. And they realize that large numbers of young people—who should be a huge asset to their countries—can easily shift to the liability column and become sources of instability if they are deprived of their fundamental right to an education.
