About Us

Welcome to CCHREA

Our focus areas are the following: Education, Civil Society Development, Community Development, Democracy & Good Governance, Human Rights, Economic Development, Environmental Conservation and Health

According to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum (2019), despite considerate progress on education access and participation over the past years, 262 million children and youth of 6 to 17 were still out of school in 2017 and more than half of children and adolescents are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics.

UNESCO in 2023, also reports that while countries have made considerable efforts, according to its new figures, the number of out-of-school children and youth risen by 6 million since 2021 and now totals 250 million. This increase is partly due to the mass exclusion of girls and young women from education in Afghanistan but is also due to continuing stagnation in education across the world.

This result undermines the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which sets the goal of quality education for all by 2030. If countries were on track with their national SDG 4 targets, 6 million more children of primary school entrance age would be in pre-school today, 58 million more children, adolescents and youth would be in school, and at least 1.7 million more primary school teachers would have been trained, according to UNESCO analysis.

“Education is in a state of emergency. While considerable efforts were made over the past decades to ensure quality education for all, UNESCO data demonstrates that the number of children out of school is now rising. States must urgently remobilise if they do not want to sell the future of millions of children”. Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General (2023).

Many developing countries still lack basic infrastructure and facilities to provide effective learning environments. Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges - at the primary and lower secondary levels, less than half of schools have access to electricity, the internet, computers, and basic drinking water (UN Report 2019).

Higher education is a focus of Target 4.3; and plays an important role in advancing the quality of learning and supporting life-long learning goals (UN Report 2019). However, according to UNESCO (2018) and UN Global Education Monitoring Report (2019), financial requirements for higher education can be prohibitive and can limit access with implications for inequality. Tertiary education is least affordable in Sub-Saharan Africa where it exceeds 60 per cent of average national income in most countries.

According to UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (adopted in September 2015), Goal 4, Target 4(b), by 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developing countries, Small Island States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education. While the importance of scholarships was recognised, donor countries and partners were encouraged to increase other forms of support to education.

UNESCO in its 2023 report has noted that “the world was a third of the way towards the deadline of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the fourth Sustainable Development Goal on education, SDG 4. But it is behind on its commitments. … There is no denying that the world is off track. It is time to put an end to complacency.”

By working together with our global partners, at CCHREA we are committed to provide access to higher education through expanding scholarships globally for 100 000 children in underserved communities by 2030.