In brief, this action campaign involves asking individuals around the world to take action to communicate the need to address poverty by educating children - male and female alike. The strategy involves providing guidance in the creation of hand-made cut-out "friends" that carry written advocacy messages (education pledges). Each one of these "friends" represents one of the 100 million out-of-school children and 860 million illiterate adults. Armed with these "friends", campaigners will take to the streets of their communities and march to their parliament buildings, hold face-to-face meetings with their Heads of State, and invite local politicians to schools to "meet with their 'friends'".

The Internet is a key tool for guiding grassroots efforts - by children and adults alike - to participate in this advocacy initiative. On the GCE website, one may download a PDF document that includes guidance for creation of a "friend". The "friend" cut-outs use a technique called "body mapping", which involves sketching a large, simple outline of a human body and then decorating it with images, words, colours, and symbols that communicate experiences and values. Specifically, participants are told that "Your 'friend' can be a real person or an imaginary one. To help you, read the stories in this leaflet, or think about the reasons children don't go to school. Then try to make up a story for your 'friend'...Most of those denied an education are girls and women, so we want as many cut-outs as possible to be female". Paper, card, cloth, newspaper, clay, old packaging, or whatever materials are available locally may be used to make a "friend". After drawing a person or cutting out the friend shape provided in the document, participants are asked to decorate the front of their "friend", writing the slogan "educate [name of friend] to end poverty". On the back side of the "friend", participants write the Global Friend of Education Pledge, which they will later ask politicians to sign.

Having created this "friend", participants can consult the GCE website to learn about local, national, and regional adovcacy events designed to communicate the campaign's messages, such as:

• Back to School events - teachers or students are encouraged to invite a local politician or leader to visit their school, and then to present him or her with one or more cut-out "friends" made by the class or literacy circle. Participants then ask the visitor to sign the Pledge, inviting him or her to write or visit again to explain what he or she has done to keep the promise.
• National and regional events - In many countries, GCE member organisations will bring "thousands of cut-out Friends from all over the country to national and regional events. They will ask leaders and heads of state to pledge to take an action in 2005 to help all of our friends get an education." Country update pages are designed to foster the sharing of campaign plans and experiences, such as that set to take place in Chile: 600 groups are together organising a massive national event featuring "friends" collected from around the country, followed by a meeting with President Ricardo Lagos.
• Send My Friend to the President - those who cannot take part in face-to-face events are asked to send their "friend" to the national contact point (detailed on the country contacts sheet), to be delivered to their President or Prime Minister.

The campaign planning pack - available in English, French, or Spanish - is designed to guide the above efforts. Among the sections included in the 14-page guidebook is "How to Get the Most Impact from the Action Week".

June 2005 update:

GCE is planning a number of events as part of the continuing Send my Friend to School campaign. On June 16, the Day of the African Child and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) Africa's White Band Day, 18 countries held high-profile send-off events to launch the friends on their "journey" to take young people's demands the G8 Summit, to be held in Scotland in July 2005. At this event, a small group of children attending a parallel Children's Summit (C8) will deliver the cut-out friends, collected from across the world, to G8 leaders. Friends will also be presented at the UN summit, scheduled for September 2005.

To document this component of the campaign, the USA-based non-profit organisation NetAid launched a web-based initiative - the "Buddy Blog" - which is a diary-style record of the "journey" of these friends as they make the trip from schools and communities in the United States to the worldwide events. The blog entries are designed to communicate how young people around the globe are coming together to tell their leaders that all children should have the chance to go to school. Click here to access the Buddy Blog.

Children, Education, Gender, Rights.

Organisers explain that they are focusing on the MDGs, which are narrower than the Education for All (EFA) goals, in part to take advantage of the high-level political and media attention that will be focused on the MDGs during 2005 (Heads of State of nearly every country will be attending a UN summit in September to review progress and develop strategies to meet the goals). In addition, "while the MDG targets that specifically deal with education are not as far-reaching as the EFA goals, the MDGs do address a wider cross-section of issues such as child and maternal health, HIV/AIDS, hunger, environmental sustainability, and women's empowerment...Education is crucial to all of these, so by focusing on the MDGs we can highlight all of the linkages between education and development".

GCE is a coalition of aid agencies, non-government organisations, child rights activists, and teachers' and public sector unions operating in 180 countries that support achievement of universal basic education). Since 2001, GCE has been organising Global Action Weeks with various themes. Click here for a summary of the 2004 event ("Big Lobby"). To view a summary of the 2003 event ("Girls' Education: The Biggest Lesson Ever"), click here.