A Quality Education for All

1
Shun and Maki did some research on education.
Shun: What is the most impressive quote on education you found?
Maki: I like Nelson Mandela’s words: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” How about you?
Shun: I chose Malala Yousafzai’s comment: “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
Maki: Everyone seems to agree that education is important. But there are still about 63 million children in the world who do not go to school. That is why the United Nations chose “A Quality Education for All” as one of the SDGs.
Shun: From what I’ve found, it seems that about half of those 63 million children live in sub-Saharan Africa. Why can’t they go to school?
Maki: As far as I know, one of the main reasons is that there are not enough schools. Poor families cannot afford to send their children to school, and some parents do not even think school is necessary. Instead, they want their children to work to earn money for the family. In short, poverty is the main reason children do not go to school.

2
Shun and Maki interviewed a woman from Rwanda. Her name is Towari Marie Louise. She believes that education and poverty are closely linked and that education is a way out of poverty for children. She now lives in Fukushima, Japan. Here is the transcript of the interview.
Shun: Thank you for making time for us today. I’m Shun, and this is Maki. First of all, we’d like to ask about your personal history.
Marie: It’s nice to meet you, Shun and Maki. I was born in the small country of Rwanda in central Africa. I worked as a dressmaking teacher there. I first came to Fukushima in 1993 as part of a JICA-sponsored program and studied Japanese and dressmaking.
Maki: From what I learned in world history class, that was around the time that the Rwandan genocide occurred.
Marie: That’s right. It was two months after I returned to Rwanda that a war broke out between two ethnic groups. It was a terrible time. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. When I fled with my husband and our two children to a refugee camp, we saw many dead people lying along the roads.
Shun: That’s awful.
Marie: During that time, I saw many horrible things that made me hate war even more. The saddest thing I saw was a mother lying with her baby at her breast.
When I looked more closely, I realized that the mother was dead but the baby was still trying to drink its mother’s milk.

3
Thanks to her friends in Japan, Marie Louise and her family were able to move back to Fukushima in 1994. She raised her children there and came to realize that education is the key to ending the terror of war.
Marie: In 2000, I set up a nonprofit organization called Think About Education in Rwanda. Through this NPO, I was able to establish the Umuco Mwiza School in 2001 in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Since then, the NPO has been supporting the school and its students.
Shun: That’s wonderful. Tell us more about the school.
Marie: We’re trying to offer more children an opportunity to learn. At present, about 270 kindergarten and elementary school students attend the school. Like schools in Japan, we have a sports day, we have a good library, and we have art and music classes. We also give students regular medical checkups.
Maki: What do you think is the most important thing in school life?
Marie: For us, it is the lunches served at school. This makes students healthier, and they can concentrate and learn better. The school-lunch program brings more children to the school and means that they stay in school longer.

4
At first, as with other schools in Rwanda, children at the Umuco Mwiza School went home for lunch. But some families didn’t have enough food, and some children came back to school hungry and crying. Marie Louise wanted to change this, so she introduced a school-lunch program.
Maki: How did you get to know about the school-lunch program?
Marie: When my daughters went to elementary school in Japan, they were given lunch every day. I think Japanese school lunches are great because no child has to worry about food. In Rwanda, we have the saying: A hungry child won’t listen. It’s hard to study on an empty stomach.
Maki: I see. What effect has the school had on students?
Marie: Twenty years ago, I asked the students in our new school what they wanted to be when they grew up. I was shocked that some said they didn’t know if they would live that long. But today the children have big dreams. Some even say they want to be the president of Rwanda!
Shun: That’s amazing. Finally, do you have a message you’d like to share with us?
Marie: I hope people will stop thinking that poor children don’t want to go to school. Children who live in poverty have as much desire to learn as any other children. And I want poor people to have the same chance as everyone else to get an education.
Maki: Thank you very much for your time today. I hope that we can do our best to make people aware of the value of education for everyone around the world.