The school year is well underway for 2022, but for children living in poverty around the world, there is still much uncertainty. COVID-19 has been a health and economic crisis, but it has also been an education crisis – particularly for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable children. With no money for their parents to pay for their education, many children will be left behind...
Some may never see the inside of a classroom again.
At the peak of the pandemic, an estimated 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries were locked out of school. While schools in many countries have opened up, heading back to class when school reopens is not necessarily a given for many children whose families can’t afford it.
The longer a student misses school, the more likely they are to never return, with families in poverty doing whatever they can to survive.
For the most vulnerable children, this puts them at risk of child labour and child marriage. Without an education, illiterate children will grow into illiterate adults. Children will have their exercise books replaced with hand ploughs, while some will be married before they are even teenagers.
But you can help.
The current education crisis
617 million
youth worldwide lack basic mathematics and literacy skills
1 in 4
rural households in India have children engaged in child labour since the pandemic
Only 37%
of parents in Pakistan said they would re-enrol their daughters in school after the pandemic.
How you can help
A very special back-to-school donation can help Opportunity International Australia reach out to the most vulnerable children and families as they recover from the devastation of COVID-19. It can help us provide...
School fee loans to help parents afford school fees, uniforms and textbooks
School improvement loans to enable school administrators to invest in infrastructure and classroom upgrades, access technology and enhance learning practices to improve the quality of the education they provide.
Please, will you consider making a very special gift to help some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable children head back to school?
Just $100 is enough to help 10 children go to school in Asia
$500 is enough to help 50 children
$1,000 is enough to help 100 children
Your gift can support no child being left behind.
PLEASE DONATE TODAY
Meet Acu
In a village in Indonesia, 19-year-old Acu suffered through 68 weeks of school closures when he was trying to finish his final years of vocational high school. Acu lives in a makeshift home with his parents and sister with only a hard piece of wood to serve as a bed. His mother and father are banana farmers, but they only earn Rp.800,000 (A$77) a week to provide food, shelter, clothing and other necessities for their whole family. For Acu, finishing school with the challenges caused by COVID-19 looked impossible.
But then his parents received an education loan of Rp.5,000,000 (A$485) from Opportunity. Where poverty had prohibited them from being able to invest in their son’s education, the loan meant they could now pay Acu’s school fees and access supplies for him to continue to study at home while school was closed. Thanks to a donation from someone like you, Acu was able to continue learning Mathematics, Indonesian and Civics alongside his favourite subject Light Vehicle Engineering – his dream vocation.
<
"Before we didn’t know how to get a step up in life. This education loan helped us for my son’s future. Seeing our children passionate about their education is our thanks – it is enough for us to get us through the other worries in life.”
Acih, mother of Acu
QUALITY EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN LEADS TO...
✓ higher incomes and economic growth
✓ improved health outcomes
✓ reduced population growth and child mortality
✓ the protection of children’s rights and delays in child marriage
✓ the empowerment of women in the home and workplace
✓ improved climate change adaptation
✓ more stable, resilient societies.
All these factors combined can help lift families, communities, and even whole countries out of poverty.
DONATE NOW
I would like to give:
Donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible and will be sent to the area of greatest need.
Opportunity International Australia respects your privacy and complies with Australian privacy laws. We may use your contact details to send you program updates showing the impact of your support, invitations to events and requests for donations. To find out more about how we collect, store, use and disclose personal information and how you can access and correct it, view our Privacy Policy.
If you do not want to receive marketing communications from Opportunity, please contact us on opinfo@opportunity.org.au or 1800 812 164.
Opportunity International Australia ABN 83 003 805 043
Prefer to send your donation in via post, email or fax? Download our Donation Form here.
Prefer to give via Direct Debit? You can also download our Direct Debit Request Form and Direct Debit Service Agreement here.
