The Willoughby Foundation

The Basic Need for Education Access to the knowledge of our species is a birthright that must be guaranteed to everyone. When we deny education to large portions of the world population we foster terrorism and political oppression and increase the spread of deadly diseases. This threatens us all and also damages the global economy. When we fail to provide education to most of the world's population we are throwing away the potential genius that can provide solutions to the difficult problems that we all face. The creation and maintenance of a literate electorate is essential to the survival of our democratic forms of government. The State of Education Worldwide Estimates of the number of children with no access to education are as high as 140 million. If one's criteria expand to the number of children who have no practical access to the kind of K-12 education Americans expect for their own children, then the number of disadvantaged children is probably closer to one billion (half of the world's children). This failure to provide practical access to education is the most serious threat that faces us all. Despite numerous international declarations that recognize that "...mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give..."1 worldwide education has remained inadequate primarily due to unaffordably high cost, censorship, and lack of self determination.