Global Initiatives

Accelerate Initiative

Education is one of the most effective preventive approaches against HIV infection, and can help ensure that school age children, who have the lowest rates of infection of any age group, can grow up free of infection. The education sector has a central role in the multisectoral response to HIV and AIDS. But current evidence shows that the education sector response by both countries and agencies has often been slow and inadequate. At the request of countries affected by HIV and AIDS, the UNAIDS Inter Agency Task Team for Education was established as a mechanism for coordinating action on HIV and education among the UNAIDS co-sponsors, bilateral donors and Civil Society.

In 2002, the IATT established a Working Group with the specific operational aim of helping countries to “Accelerate the Education Sector Response to HIV and AIDS in Africa”. Working with country teams, the Working Group identified five key objectives: To promote leadership by the education sector and create sectoral demand for a response to HIV and AIDS; To harmonize support among development partners, so as to better assist countries and reduce transaction costs; To promote co-ordination with the national AIDS authorities, and enhance access to AIDS funds; To share information on HIV and AIDS that has specific relevance to the education sector; To strengthen the technical content and implementation of the education sector response to HIV and AIDS.

Child Friendly Schools

A Child Friendly School is a school which treats children as subjects with rights, while accepting its obligations to fulfill these rights and providing children with a good quality education in a child-centred environment. UNICEF created a framework to develop the concept of Child Friendly Schools, based on the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Child to Child

The Child to Child Approach links children’s learning with their living through a series of activities, whereby, they are enabled and encouraged to actively participate in promoting the health, wellbeing and development of themselves, their families and communities. The Approach is guided by the Conventions of the Rights of the Child and emphasises the principles of inclusion, non-discrimination and acting in the best interests of the child.

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Education for All

UNESCO leads the global Education for All movement, aiming to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.

Panel at the event on Combatting to eliminate NTDs

FRESH

FRESH is an acronym for Focusing Resources on Effective School Health. It is an inter-agency framework for strengthening school health, hygiene and education, combining a core group of proven cost-effective strategies recommended by UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank. FRESH recognises the importance of a healthy school setting for achieving the global goal of Education for All by 2015. More particularly, children must be healthy to fully participate in education and maximise its benefits while good quality education can lead to better health and nutrition outcomes for children, especially girls, and thus for the next generation as well.

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Health Promoting Schools

A Health-Promoting School (HPS) may be characterised as a school constantly strengthening its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working. The WHO generated the concept of Health-Promoting Schools through their Global School Health Initiative, launched in 1995. This initiative supports the principles outlined by the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986); the Jakarta Declaration on Health Promotion (1997); and the WHO's Expert Committee on School Health Education and Promotion (1995).

Home Grown School Feeding

The WFP, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization, have developed the “Home Grown School Feeding Programme”. This programme aims to integrate school garden initiatives with school feeding programmes whilst promoting and increasing local food production in rural, food insecure, areas.

Home Grown School Feeding

Millennium Development Goals

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders committed to a set of time-bound and measurable goals for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women, now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Declaration also outlined a wide range of commitments in human rights, good governance and democracy.

Millennium Development Goals

Nutrition Friendly Schools

Nutrition-related health problems in children are increasingly significant causes of disability and premature death worldwide. While undernutrition continues to be a major problem in many developing countries, the problem of overweight and obesity have reached epidemic proportions globally, and both developed and developing countries are seriously affected. In some countries, the epidemic of obesity sits alongside continuing problems of undernutrition, creating a double-burden of nutrition-related ill health among the population, including children.

WASH

The WASH campaign is an effort by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council to mobilise political support and action around the world to ensure an end to this suffering. Particular emphasis will be placed on setting a global sanitation target, withoug which health for all cannot be achieved.

World Food Programme

WFP is the United Nations frontline agency in the fight against global hunger. Operations aim to save lives in refugee crises and other emergencies, improve nutrition and quality of life of world's most vulnerable people at critical times in their lives and enable development by (a) helping people build assets that benefit them directly; (b) promoting the self-reliance of poor people and communities.

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