ASPBAE attended the UN Girls Education Intiative (UNGEI) Global Advisory Committee (GAC) Meeting on June 1-2, 2007 in New York.

The United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) is a inter-agency initiative, with UNICEF designated as the lead agency, was launched in April 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar.  UNGEI’s goal is to improve the quality and availability of girls’ education in support of the gender-related EFA goals and MDGs – of eliminating the gender gap in primary and secondary education originally set for 2005, and ensuring that by 2015, all children, girls and boys alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and have equal access to all levels of education. UNGEI is an integral part of the EFA movement, with the status of an EFA flagship.
 
The  Global UNGEI Advisory Committee established in January 2004. has a broad membership, and including UN as well as non-UN partners. The Global Advisory Committee (GAC),, is committed to promoting a multi-sectoral approach to girls’ education, including supporting national plans, PRSPs and gender strategies, as well as working with other groups involved in gender issues.
 
Earlier ASPBAE was invited to be Co-Chair of one of the thematic Working groups of the Regional Office for  South Asia (ROSA). In this capacity, ASPBAE was thus invited as an observer in the UNGEI Global Advisory Committee meeting. Dr Nitya Rao represented ASPBAE in the meeting.
 
The UNGEI Global Advisory Committee (GAC) met in New York on 1-2 June 2007 to discuss issues regarding the achievements of UNGEI: monitoring of activities, the extent of gender mainstreaming into the FTI, SWAPs etc, and the engagement with the GMR. There was also considerable discussion on the modalities for UNGEI functioning.
 

• ASPBAE made a presentation on the School Report Card jointly prepared by ASPBAE and GCE which was highly acclaimed.  ASPBAE was also inducted as a member in GAC.
• A sub-group was set up to look at the success indicators at the global level and develop a monitoring framework for UNGEI.
•  A need was expressed for a tool to mainstream gender, HIV/AIDS and other forms of disparity such as child labour, disability etc into the national education sector plans. Thus another sub-group was formed to check how far these different disparities have been taken into account.
• Modalities for GAC were worked out which include: two meetings in a year, one to be tied to an international event such as the Working Group or High Level Group meeting and the second to be stand-alone, based on a theme and region specific reaching out to a wider group of stakeholders.