Julia Gillard’s New Job!

Julia Gillard has a great new job with the Global Partnership for Education. With some sixty nation members, supported by many global civic institutions, together contributing to a billion dollar budget administered through the World Bank GPE is the only multilateral partnership devoted to getting all children in the world’s poorest countries into school for a quality education. They have appointed Julia to be the new Chair of its Board of Directors.

Can you think of a more appropriate job for her on the international stage? Read her own thoughts about it on the EDUCATION FOR ALL BLOG at the GPE site.

I have never had any doubts about her strong belief that every child should have access to a high quality education. She knows that education changes lives. It changed hers as it did mine! I was thrilled to be reading about her today and recalling her passion for equality of opportunity. Here are some verses I wrote about that soon after she became our Prime Minister, with some new lines about today’s news.

Chance Is A Fine Thing. Opportunity Is Better!

Another time, another place,
Or if they’d been a different race,
This girl-child’s father and her mother
Had no constraint to smother
Her, or have to run and hide
While waiting for a ride
To hope, across an open sea.

Their littlest one, weak in her chest,
Was able still to pass the test
For passage to Australia.
No risk there of failure –
An ideal migrant family!

That child although so powerful now
Still seems to stop to ponder how
It happened, and what would have become
Of her if, not a ten pound Pom,
She’d been instead a refugee.

Now she’s a famous Prime Minister,
Whose new job is to administer
A fund whose aim is to advance
Her own ambition – to give the chance
To children everywhere for equal opportunity.