Sustainable Development Goal #4: Quality Education

This art project is the fourth out of the 17 SDGs, and has become the second goal to be celebrated in terms of achieving quality education in the campaign at Global Philadelphia Association. The artwork is a colorful, elegant interpretation of the goal of supporting quality education in the city of Philadelphia.

Sponsor of the project: Saint Joseph’s University
Artist(s): Isabella Akhtarshenas and Arthur Haywood
Grantee: Gompers Philadelphia School District School

About Isabella Akhtarshenas

Isabella Akhtarshenas is a versatile graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist. She strategically uses colors and shapes to create whimsical and lively forms. As an avid houseplant collector, she’s inspired largely by the beauty of nature, and is interested in design for environmental sustainability.

Location of the painting: Drexel Library at Saint Joseph's University & Samuel Gompers Elementary School
Academic Partner: David Steingard (Haub School of Business), Saint Joseph’s University

Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. Over the past decade, major progress was made towards increasing access to education and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 — nearly one-fifth of the global population in that age group. And more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, a majority of countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 percent of students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school. And nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals needed to look to other sources for daily nutrition.

Never before have so many children been out of school at the same time, disrupting learning and upending lives, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized. The global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that may jeopardize hard-won gains made in improving global education.

Source: United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, SDG#4 Quality Education

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