The latest UNESCO statistics show that education transforms the development of peoples and that poverty can be overcome with education. "If all children had equal access to education, per capita income would increase by 23% over the next 40 years." Other very current problems can also be fought with education: "If all girls were to complete primary education, child marriage and child mortality could be reduced to one-sixth of the current level, and maternal mortality to two-thirds."
Education has the ability to reduce extreme poverty and to promote wide-ranging development goals. This is the good news. "Education is a way to get rich!"
Tchapua, for example, is the name of someone who lived through the terrible war in Angola. When he was two he was sent from his village in Luanda so that he would be safe. His father and his brothers were killed in the conflict. One day, returning from school, Tchapua found his mother dead. He continued to study. Today, he is the father of a family and director of the Infant School at the Don Bosco Centre. "I have always remembered the words of my mother: study, my son, and one day you will have your reward."
An optimistic message: "Study and one day you will have your reward." There is no doubt that education can give wealth, but here it is a question not only of material wealth. It is the wealth that makes a true human being. It is the wealth of being happy, recognized, loved, well-liked, because the poor today, as G. Gutierrez wrote, "are not accepted as a people in our society. They are invisible and have no rights, their dignity is not recognized."
