HH Sheikha Moza announces WISE Award for MDG 2 achievement

At a special session of the 2011 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) focusing on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser announced that from next year, one of the 6 annual WISE Awards would specifically recognise achievements helping to advance the realisation of the MDG which calls for universal primary education - MDG 2.

Her Highness, a MDG Advocate and UNESCO Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education, reaffirmed her commitment to making WISE more focused on the achievement of MDG 2 by also announcing this year's special MDG session at WISE would be repeated annually, with the objective to address a specific urgent aspect related to the MDGs each year.

This year's session, focused on innovative financing for education to achieve the MDGs, brought together experts from all sectors to exchange ideas and best practices for using all available resources for education in more effective and innovative ways in the context of the current global financial crisis.

Her Highness stressed: “[Funding] is a macro problem. We need to tackle it in a more comprehensive way and see MDG2 as a business case with a funding focus. There have to be targets that have measurable outcomes to serve key performance indicators. I think the business sector is most affected by the outcome of education so we need to rethink because business is the main end-user."

She went on, “We need to revisit our goals. Methods have to be more creative and more innovative. Education should be dynamic and always flexible and adaptable.”

Her Highness was joined on the MDG session panel by Nicholas Burnett, member of the task force on education of the leading group on Innovative Financing for Development; Carol Bellamy, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership Fund (previously known as the Education For All/Fast Track Initiative); former Brazilian Education Minister, Cristovam Buarque and Reeta Roy, President and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation. The panel emphasised the considerable funding gap between the health and education sectors and that effective partnerships needed to be established. Accountability through more monitoring of education projects on the ground was necessary to attract more private sector interest, it said.