“Education is a basic right and need for all human beings,” affirmed Seventh-day Adventist Church education director Dr. Humberto Rasi during a high level meeting in New York called to discuss the development of education in the 21st century.

“The Adventist Church is committed to do its part to raise people’s standards of living through education,” Rasi continued. “The church’s commitment to education is longstanding and substantial and is an education based on values. We consider education as embracing the whole scope of human life from pre-school to retirement-for we are interested in education at all ages. As part of our program we have trained tens of thousands of teachers who are now working in both the church system and in public schools. Our mandate is to educate the whole person: socially, physically, mentally and spiritually.”

Consequently, “we support the United Nations’ call for ‘education for all,’ and wish to work together with other non-government organizations and UN agencies in making sure all have adequate access to education.”

The January 11 meeting was held under the auspices of the Conference of Non-governmental Organizations in consultative status with the UN and is an ongoing program that will involve many different educational groups and UN agencies, such as UNESCO and the UN Development Program.

“We are interested in what we can contribute to this program and seek avenues of cooperation to achieve what is so greatly needed-education for all, especially those who are currently so disadvantaged,” Rasi said.

According to UN statistics, 100 million children around the world are not attending school, of whom a high percentage are girls.

The Adventist Church educational system has currently more than a million students attending some 6,000 schools in more than 100 countries. []