Global March and its members will remind governments of their commitments towards the Education For All and UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during the Global Action Week, 24-30 April, 2005. The theme of this week is "Educate to End Poverty". Young people and education activists in more than 100 countries will join together this week to protest world leaders' failure to meet a major UN target on girls' education this year – a failure they say will lead to greater poverty and unnecessary child deaths.

This will be the fifth annual Global Action Week in the Global March, together with its partners in the Global Campaign for Education, will support millions of children around the world, who are not in school currently, in demanding their right to education.

Five years ago, governments of the world promised to get equal numbers of girls as boys into school by 2005. The target – the first of all the UN's Millennium Development Goals to fall due - will be missed, and experts believe that a second Millennium target for giving every child a quality primary education is also at risk.

As part of the Global Campaign for Education's (GCE) ‘Send my Friend to School' campaign from April 24-30, children will be presenting politicians, cabinet ministers and even heads of state with colourful cardboard cut-outs, or “friends”, each of which represents one of the more than 100 million children out of school. A million cut-out ‘friends', collected from around the world, will be delivered to G8 leaders at the G8 Summit in Scotland in July. From April 24, members of the public can also make an online ‘friend' at: www.sendmyfriend.info.

“Girls' education is the key to ending world poverty. 2005 marks the year that world leaders have broken their promise to get equal numbers of girls and boys into school. I support the Global Campaign for Education's call to educate girls to end poverty and call on world leaders to respond to calls from children around the world to 'send my friend to school” said Graca Machel, human rights activist and wife of Nelson Mandela, while making her own ‘friend' as part of the campaign.

Mr Mandela delivered his own rallying cry to young people around the world when he met children involved in the Send my Friend to School campaign: “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” Children from all corners of the world will be rising to the challenge set by Mr Mandela and showing their solidarity with the more than 100 million children around the world and 860 million illiterate adults who have been denied their fundamental right to learning, most of whom are girls and women.

UNESCO estimates that $7.1 billion per year is required in aid to achieve universal primary education in 79 low-income countries. However, aid to basic education has increased only modestly since 2000, barely reaching $1.7bn in 2003. “Without a firm long-term pledge of dramatically increased resources, very poor countries simply cannot afford to take additional steps to reach the 2015 education goals,” says a recent 45-page GCE report detailing the contribution of a few rich countries towards necessary aid for education.