Alliance for Education

The main objective of this alliance is to start a widely accepted social initiative to improve educational opportunities for children.

Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan has stressed the importance of cooperation between state, private and civil sector, to support young children and adolescents in every phase of their educational progress. The first 13 partners of the Alliance for Education have signed the founding charter on February 22th, 2011 in Stuttgart.

The alliance will support the development of local educational initiatives, build networks between existing programmes and convey professional expertise. Beneficiaries are national institutions and foundations that support disadvantaged children and adolescents. According to recent estimates there are 18,000 foundations in Germany with an annual budget of 16 to 17 billion euros.

The number of foundations that support educational projects is constantly growing. The alliance serves as an instrument to coordinate a nationwide network, to channel the expertise of all concerned parties, to publish good practice examples and to accelerate a change of social awareness. The biggest challenge is to support children and adolescents that had a difficult start into their educational career. The social background should not be a negative factor for their personal future.

Clubs, associations, committed citizens, together with schools and local authorities will further develop basic measures for children and adolescents which offer knowledge such as as cultural techniques, common standards of education and living, values such as team spirit or the willingness to make an effort. The instruments are as diverse as the many different protagonists. Local initiatives cover sports programmes, extracurricular cultural or musical activities, summer camps or sponsorship or mentoring schemes or help with homework.

Therefore, the alliance focuses on protagonists from the main fields of sports and mobility, cultural education, research and experiments.