Me to We provides socially conscious eco-friendly products and life-changing experiences.

"Only the educated are free."- Epictetus, Roman Philosopher

A Note from the Speakers

How many of you, at one point in your life, have woken up to the roar of the morning alarm clock and thought to yourself: "It would be so much nicer to just lay here in bed today rather than go to school". I'm sure most of us would answer "Yes" to that statement. Sometimes it is hard to see how valuable an opportunity is when you are living it.

The opportunity to receive a fair, well-rounded education is something many of us take for granted. Here at Me to We, we are passionate about education and doing our part to ensure that everyone has fair access to it. We want to launch a global discussion on the value of education and the barriers students face across the world. We have set up this site as a resource to help you better understand some of the challenges faced by students in the United States, Canada, and overseas.

The first step in creating change is educating yourself on the issues, so take a look below and then share these facts with your friends and family. Equal opportunity for everyone to receive a suitable education is a dream that can become reality, but change starts with you.

Much love,

Mischa & Tania

Facts & Statistics: Barriers to Education

• a
• USA: Public School System
• CANADA: Aboriginal Education
• INTERNATIONAL: Education Around World

• School Enrolment and Graduation

• In the US, the net primary school enrolment/attendance between 1996 and 2004 was 92 percent. However, the secondary school graduation rate for the Class of 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available) was approximately 70 percent, according to Education Week's Diplomas Count 2010 report.

• There are currently 134,400 First Nations children and youth under 20 who live on-reserve, and the schools that 60,000 of them attend. In 2006, about 61 percent of First Nations on-reserve youth aged 20-24 did not have a high school diploma.

• Of the estimated 700 million primary school-age children in the world today, about 121 million are not in school. Nearly three-quarters of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and 56 per cent are girls. For example, only 50 percent of secondary school-aged girls and 63 percent of boys in India are enrolled in secondary school.

• Drop Our Rates and Non-Attendance

• Every 26 seconds a teen drops out of high school in the United States, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million dropouts each year, according to a 2007 report from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

• In 2006, 61 percent of First Nations youth aged 20-24 did not have a high school diploma (Census 1996, CCL 2009).

  The top reasons First Nations youth gave for why they left school were: "pregnancy and family responsibilities" (20 percent), the "need to work to help support family" (18 percent) and "no interest in school" (12 percent). These reasons show how students are pulled out of school by poverty, the lack of health care and jobs and the challenge schools face trying to engage their students with minimal resources (CCL 2009).

• There are currently 218 million children involved in child labour. Out of which an estimated 158 million children aged five to14 are engaged in child labour— this translates into one in six children in the world.

• Reading & Writing

• When grade eight students across the United States were tested for reading, most scored between 20 and 35 percent of grade level, according to a 2007 report from the National Centre for Educational Statistics.

• When the First Nations Education Council (FNEC) asked 19 First Nations communities about their schools: 86 percent said that languages were the most underfunded area in on-reserve schools, which is a big deal because many First Nations languages are in danger of disappearing.

• Two-thirds of the world's 875 million illiterate adults are women. About one in five adults in today's world—774 million people—is illiterate. For example, less than half of Sierra Leonean women aged 15 to 24 can read and write. Evidence shows that there is an inverse relationship between adult literacy rates and the incidence of child labour in the long run as educated adults have fewer and better-educated children.

• Social & Economic Impacts

• A 2009 report from Edward Gordon found that by 2020, there will be an estimated 123 million high-paying and high-skilled jobs in the United States, but only 50 million people will be qualified to fill those positions.

• For decades, the lack of education on-reserve has contributed to higher rates of illnesses such as diabetes, depression and some mental illnesses, shorter life expectancy, higher rates of crime and incarceration, and higher unemployment than the rest of the country.

  The 61 percent of First Nations students who don't have a high school diploma means that there are roughly 70,000 First Nations youth who, if nothing changes over the next five to ten years, soon will be out of school and won't be able to get a good job, which otherwise would inject an additional $71-billion into Canada's economy over the next 10 years.

• For every year of quality education that a child receives, their adult earning potential increases by a worldwide average of 10 percent, thus further proving children who attend school are less likely to be involved in hazardous or exploitative work and are more likely to break out of cycles of poverty.

  Evidence from around the world has shown that poor families are willing to make sacrifices to send their children to school when it is economically and physically accessible, which means that their unemployed adult relatives may take their places in the workforce.