The winners of the Steve Sinnott Award for Young Global Education Campaigners will travel with Plan UK to Ghana. Ronan and Rhiannon, two year 10 students at Walthamstow School for Girls, won the award for their ideas on how to raise awareness of the millennium development goal that by 2015 all children in the world should finish primary school.
"We were horrified to learn that 75 million children in the world aren't getting an education," said Ronan. "We wanted to know why this isn't changing fast enough."
Each year, a different member organisation hosts the Award, which sends young people from the UK on a trip to a host country where they will have the opportunity to investigate the barriers that prevent young people from going to school. On their return, they will spread the word among their peers in the UK and encourage them to become involved in the campaign. This year�s award was hosted by Plan.
The girls presented their thoughts to a panel of judges, including the suggestion of making a film contrasting the educational lives of young people from Ghana and the UK, to be shown at the World Cup and Olympics.
The award was set up in memory of the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, who died in 2008. He was a passionate advocate of the Global Campaign for Education, an umbrella body of charities, and teaching unions. His widow, Mary Sinnott, one of the judges, said he would have been �blown away� by Ronan and Rhiannon.
Details of their presentation were featured in the Guardian�s education supplement, which will also run stories on the girls� trip to Ghana, and what they encounter there.
"We were horrified to learn that 75 million children in the world aren't getting an education," said Ronan. "We wanted to know why this isn't changing fast enough."
