75 million children in countries affected by crisis are in desperate need of education support. It’s an urgent problem.

Next week, at the first ever World Humanitarian Summit, world leaders will meet to find ways to give better support to people affected by conflict, natural disaster and other emergencies.

They will be launching a brand new global fund to help children called ‘Education Cannot Wait’. It is designed to ensure that quick response (catalytic) funding and also longer term funding for education reaches those young people who need it most. The fund can help ensure that those children, who experience the traumatic upheaval of a crisis, can access good quality education as soon as possible after those events.

Our hope is that the UK government will be able to take a lead and contribute $50 million right away to help the fund to get underway. We have put together a policy report ‘The fierce urgency of now’ which outlines in more detail the steps that need to happen to help the millions of children who are missing out on their schooling.

If it meets its fundraising goals the ‘Education Cannot Wait’ fund could be helping 1.36 million children in its first year, and scaling up so that it is able to support the education of 34 million children by the fifth year.

Find out more:

• read GCE UK’s policy report, which calls on the UK government to take action on education in emergencies: The fierce urgency of now
• listen to a podcast on The Guardian website: Why are so many children around the world out of school?
• read this blog on the BOND website: Interrupted and unfulfilled…
• infographics from ODI (below) on the need, proposal and next steps regarding the establishment of the ‘Education cannot wait’ fund