Call Your Rep. This Week to Sign the GPE Letter

Rep. Jan Schakowsky

On Tuesday July 24 of the RESULTS International Conference in Washington, DC, many of our advocates requested that their Representatives sign on to Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s letter to Secretary of State Clinton on the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The letter asks the Secretary of State Clinton to commit $125 million of the U.S. global education investment to GPE. This is not additional money, but a request that the U.S. allocate a larger portion of Congress’ appropriation for global education to GPE.

Take Action in 5 minutes: Call your Representative’s office and use the following EPIC laser talk to make your request to whoever answers the phone. You can find the name of your Representative here, and use the Capitol Switchboard number to make your call:  (202) 224-3121.

• Engage: I’m calling to make a request for of the Representative. Can you see that he/she gets it? I’m calling because 61 million children around the globe lack the opportunity to go to school—no reading, writing, or math.
• Problem: It's great that the U.S. invests in global education, but we should be investing more of these dollars in ensuring that all children receive a quality basic education.
• Inform: One way we could do this is by investing more in the Global Partnership for Education, or GPE. GPE is focus on getting 25 million kids in school over by 2015, and training 600,000 new teachers. GPE is an effective organization.
• Call to Action: Representative Jan Schakowsky is circulating a sign-on letter to Secretary of State Clinton requesting that the US allocate $125 million of our global education investment (last year it was $800 million) for GPE. Will the Rep. sign on to this letter? I can send you a copy of the letter if you like.

Take Action in 10 minutes (and have more impact): Call and ask for the foreign policy aide in your Rep’s office and have the same conversation.