Quality education: that's the goal at the heart of the twelfth chapter of BG4SDGs - Time To Change

Important yet fragile is the world's right to education: this is what can be deduced from reading the UNESCO report that speaks of more than 250 million children around the world who cannot go to school because of discrimination or unaffordable education costs. A high number when one considers how crucial study and knowledge can be in the growth of a country in more ways than one.

And it is precisely access to study and the quality of education that is at the center of the narrative of the twelfth chapter of BG4SDGs - Time to Change, the project set up to delve into the state of the art of the process of achieving the 17 goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. On this occasion, Stefano Guindani's lens focused on investigating the situation related to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 "Providing quality, equitable and inclusive education and learning opportunities for all."

To analyze the situation, the photographer went to India, 330km from Mumbai to the small village of Paritewadi which is home to less than 2,000 inhabitants and until a few years ago had an education rate close to 2 percent. In fact, since 2009, with the "Right to Education Act" introduced by the Indian government, the situation has changed throughout the country causing the illiteracy rate to drop from 75% to 30%.

An important improvement for a developing country with unique territorial characteristics and infrastructural difficulties that need a concrete response from everyone, starting with communities. Indeed, this is the case of Ranjitsinh Disale, the 32-year-old "world's best" teacher and winner of the Global Teacher Prize announced in 2014. Disale was honored for promoting the education of young women in the Paritewadi village school, forever changing the lives of girls, who are often given away as brides from an early age.

"It is not easy to imagine a small nest of the modern world in a rural area eight hours by road from Mumbai. Yet there is. A nest where the young students of Ranjitsinh Disale take refuge to open a window to the world. A tiny building decorated with slogans and goals that we in our technologically advanced cities also pursue: Gender Equality, Peace, Justice and above all Quality Education. Quality education and inclusive education, the one pursued by the Indian teacher who, with the establishment of the school, allowed so many girls to be able to study instead of becoming brides at age 13; which then allowed him to create other schools and an educational method to export. A virtuous example of how sharing ideas, intellectual generosity and mutual trust can build a better future for all," said Stefano Guindani.

Low school attendance and access to studies by local communities is not the only problem, however. The teacher, thanks to a million-dollar prize he won, laid the groundwork for building a school, starting with a "dilapidated building, somewhere between a stable and a warehouse," ensured that all pupils had textbooks in their local language, and invented an educational system that, using QR code, allowed students to access poems, stories, video readings and homework.