H.E. Dr. Tariq Al Gurg

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the great divide that exists between those who are connected and the billions of people who are not. It is estimated that just under half of all households in the world have no internet connection, and if they do, families are increasingly having to make hard choices of prioritizing where to spend their incomes on. In the area of education specifically, although most countries have now rapidly moved towards remote learning, we still have over 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17 years old who still do not have access to connectivity at their homes and therefore cannot continue their education in times of COVID-19. In this session, we explore how access to connectivity can prove to be a game-changer for children’s education all over the world especially in the context of current challenges and why the global community needs to act now. We will highlight the work of Dubai Cares on the Global Declaration on Connectivity for Education, and how this will be launched at the upcoming RewirEd Summit at Expo 2020 Dubai.