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"Why are you going to school? Education is useless for a girl." Forty-five-year old Bibi Gul wasn't happy that her young daughter, Nisa, had chosen to attend school. It meant the 9-year-old was busy most of the time doing her homework.

Even when public schools are available, parents often don't want their daughters to walk long distances unaccompanied to reach them. By bringing schools close to home—and, in certain communities, creating classes specifically for girls—CRS ensured that thousands of girls would be able to learn.

Nisa was especially happy when a tin box of storybooks arrived. CRS provides the schools we support with "libraries in a box" so that students can take home books to read. "After this, every day I would bring a storybook and I would read it for my sisters and brothers," remembers Nisa. But her mother still wasn't happy about her studies.

Kigali — Early last year, the government introduced the 9-Year Basic Education (9 YBE) programme, which offers six years of primary education and three years of secondary education to all Rwandan children free of charge.The idea was to have school-going children unable to access education in the past to do so, and be able to compete in the job market regionally. The Ministry of Education also hopes that the programme will reduce the dropout rate in schools.Information from the Ministry of Education indicates that already, the current enrolment rate stands at 97 percent for boys and 98 percent for girls.

According to UNESCO, this is the highest enrolment rate in the region. So far, many countries are implementing free primary education. Few, however, have put in place a programme for post-primary education.

Several Headteachers say the programme has gained momentum following a recent schools construction campaign that has seen thousands of new classrooms built across the country. Nearly all the classrooms have been voluntarily built by parents, teachers, university students or government officials. They say the strategy of free education for all is beginning to pay off. The enrolment rate has increased as more children go to school.

But as President René Préval emphasized during my meeting with him, we must be thinking about tomorrow. Haiti, though desperately poor, had been making progress. It was enjoying a new stability; investors had returned. That will not be enough to rebuild the country as it was, nor is there any place for cosmetic improvements. We must help Haiti build back better, working with the government so that today's investments have lasting benefit, creating jobs and freeing Haitians from dependence on the world's generosity.

Haiti's plight is a reminder of our wider responsibilities. A decade ago, the international community began a new century by agreeing to act to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015. Great strides have been made toward some of these ambitious "millennium goals," variously targeting core sources of global poverty and obstacles to development -- from maternal health and education to managing infectious disease. Yet progress in other critical areas lags badly. We are very far from delivering on our promises of a better future for the world's poor.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, reports that the abolition of school fees has had the intended effect of vastly increasing access to education. The number of primary students in Kenya has increased by nearly 2 million.

Encouragingly, the dropout rate, an important measurement of affordability and educational quality, has also fallen. The share of students completing primary school jumped from 62.8 per cent in 2002, the last year fees were charged, to 76.2 per cent two years later as fewer poor children were forced out for nonpayment.

the lifting of fees in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa has proved to be a giant step forward for access to education by millions of the region's poor. It has helped Africa make progress towards its goal of finding a place in school for all its children. GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); var ACE_AR = {site: '768910', size: '180150'}; Over the last 15 years a number of other countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique, have also experienced explosive growth in primary school enrolment following the elimination of fees. The UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that between 2000 and 2007 overall primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa rose by 42 per cent - the greatest rate of increase in the world. As a result, the percentage of African children in primary school increased from 58 to 74 per cent. A few African countries, including Botswana, Cape Verde, Togo and Mauritius, could achieve universal primary enrolment by 2015

Despite a decade-old commitment by world leaders to tackle the crisis, some 8.8 million children still die annually before they reach the age of 5. Nearly all of these needless deaths are easily preventable at little cost. Consider that number, 8.8 million. That is more than all Canadians aged 19 or younger. And that's how many young children die every year. It works out to 24,000 children per day. Seventeen per minute. Or 400 school bus loads every day, 365 days a year. All dead.At the same time, 500,000 mothers die annually in childbirth or from other pregnancy-related causes. In other words, simply being pregnant can kill you, depending on where you live. As the mother of a nearly 2-year-old child, I am reminded daily how fortunate I am to live in Canada. It is unimaginable to me that my child could die, as 1 million do every year, from the lack of a $10 bed net to protect him from malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Diarrhea kills 1.5 million children annually. It is easily treated. So is malaria. Also, child blindness, too common in the developing world, can be prevented by just two vitamin A pills per year. Total cost: 4 cents. Better nutrition and safer birth conditions would annually save the lives of several hundred thousand pregnant women. Ten years ago, the nations of the world pledged to reduce hunger and death from a lack of basic health care. In one of their UN Millennium Development Goals, leaders committed to reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters and child mortality rates by two-thirds within 15 years. But, sadly, neither will be achieved by that target date, just five years away, unless donor countries like Canada reinvigorate the initiative.

Today, the world spends $49 billion (U.S.) on pet food every year. If half of that amount were added to current annual spending on maternal and child health, the child death rate could be cut nearly in half.

Tanzania and Burundi, for instance, have recorded a 99 per cent enrolment rate into the first grade of primary school.The pertinent question is: How effective are these funds in retaining children in school? Once enrolled, how long can the pupils be expected to last in the education system, and how many years of schooling, on average, are actually attained by East African pupils?

However, East Africa is faring badly a 9.1 years, equivalent to a pupil completing primary school, but dropping out of high school. The average number of school years actually completed regionally was a mere 4.7 years. The scenario is particularly dismal in Burundi, where on average pupils completed only 2.7 years of school.

According to the Global Education Digest 2010 published by Unesco, in the late 1990s, developing countries began to recover some of the educational ground lost in the 1980s, when enrolments stagnated or even declined in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In fact, the pace of progress accelerated since 2000 and if trends between 2000 and 2008 continue, the increase in school life expectancy in the current decade will be three times the level achieved in the 1970s.In sub-Saharan Africa, school life expectancy nearly doubled from 4.4 years to 8.4 years in the past 30 years. Despite this progress, the region has the lowest number of school years — almost half of the number of years in North America and Western Europe (16.0 years).

Tunis — Kenya has been cited as one of the best spenders in education in Africa, signalling its commitment to international development goals. An international education conference in Tunis, Tunisia, heard at the weekend that Kenya commits 7 per cent of its total income to education annually, surpassing the continental average of 5 per cent.

The figure this year is Sh180 billion, with basic education taking Sh150 billion and Sh30 billion for higher education. As a result, school enrolment has increased by more than 20 per cent in the past five years, putting the country on good stead to realise education for all goals.