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Mobiles for Education Alliance Symposium Opens at the OAS

The 4th Annual Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance International Symposium opened Monday at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC, bringing together leading donors, private sector representatives, NGOs, researchers, project innovators, and key policymakers to collaborate and exchange ideas on projects to apply mobile technologies to improve education around the world.

The OAS is a member of the Steering Committee of the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance - an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, academic researchers, and implementing organizations. It explores cutting-edge intersections between mobile technologies for education, particularly in low-resource and developing country context, to reduce duplicative efforts, to promote collective knowledge-sharing, and to identify and support efforts to scale promising interventions.

In her address to participants, the Executive Secretary for Integral Development of the OAS, Sherry Tross, said “We need to focus on two things to have impact on the ground -- innovation and access to quality education. Given that inequality continues to be one of the greatest challenges facing countries in the Americas, we need to work together to use innovative technologies to open up opportunities for larger segments of the population to access top quality education.”

For his part, Charles North, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), announced U$1 billion in awards to provide access to education in crisis and conflict areas to teach children how to read. The awards, North explained, are structured to support activities over five years, subject to the availability of funds: $500 million in activities to increase access to education in crisis and conflict-affected environments for 15 million children; and $500 million in activities to improve reading skills for up to 100 million children in primary grades. In explaining the awards, he emphasized that “technology can be transformative--it can change lives.”

The three-day Symposium attracts nearly 200 participants from more than 70 organizations around the world, representing leading thinkers, policy makers and implementers of technology use for advancing quality education. Participants come from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as well as many other businesses and organizations. During the event, participants are able to “pitch” their projects in small working groups organized to identify project collaborators and possible partnership in areas ranging from youth and workforce development to governance and accountability in education, and mobile payments in education.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-447/14