Noemí Wilson, Blog 2, June 27, 2021

 I am grateful for this week and the new skills and insights I learned. I started off this week working with Michael Santos, senior policy associate. Michael works on the Policy and Legislative Advocacy Team. I was connected with him early on because he specializes in domestic housing issues and I share this interest with him because of my experiences in securing affordable housing in Chicago and against homelessness in DC. He explained that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development was accepting public comments on a new bill they are implementing soon called the Housing Trust Fund. I learned that public comments are citizens’ opportunities to comment on how this bill should and should not be executed. Because RESULTS does not usually participate in administrative law enforcement, he explained that we mostly follow and support the public comments of other accredited organizations. In this case, we followed the sample comment that the National Low Income Housing Coalition published. Together, we made edits and submitted it Friday, June 25th when it was due. 

Later this week, I attended a planning meeting with those who continue to organize to get the signatures of congressional representatives to sign a letter in support of the Global Partnership for Education’s mission. Together, multiple organizations, including RESULTS, are working in hopes of getting the Biden administration to pledge to give $1B to the Global Partnership for Education to uplift education systems in developing countries. This meeting was debriefing after the G7 met in regards to this and to see where we stand on our progress now. Through other leaders, I learned that Italy committed to giving $25 million, the highest amount they have ever committed to giving before. They also discussed educated guesses as to why the United States may be so hesitant to commit to funding global education. I felt like I was tapping into a topic that I have been interested in for years now and the reason I came to AU to study international relations: diplomacy. Members in the meeting who heard about what happened at the G7 meeting explained that because the United Kingdom cut back on international aid, the US may feel as if they need to step it up to make up for that. The most interesting part mentioned during this meeting was that they announced that the UK ambassador was holding a dinner the next day with members of the Biden administration and leaders in USAID. I couldn’t help but think that I hope the food was good at the dinner so leaders felt more inclined to support global education.

Devotional this week had themes of education that I thought of during this meeting on global education. I thought of the idea of Abuelita theology and how many Latinx families, and others too, learn about God through their mothers and grandmothers, especially when formal education on religion is lacking. Parents and even grandparents are our first teachers. But connecting this to global education, for many children around the world, parents and family are their only teachers. I am reminded of why it is the United States’ obligation to fund education globally. Education for all would empower the whole world and make for a brighter future guaranteed.