Our Teachers, Our Heroes

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Oct 05, 2025, 00:01 ET

On World Teachers Day, Education Cannot Wait calls for expanded resources to support educators everywhere

NEW YORK, Oct. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As we celebrate this year's World Teachers Day – with the central theme of recasting teaching as a collaborative profession – Education Cannot Wait (ECW) calls on people everywhere to provide teachers and the communities they serve with the resources they need to succeed in their crucial profession.

There is a global teacher shortage that will impact our ability to deliver on the promise of education for all, as outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. According to UNESCO, we will need 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers worldwide by 2030. Sub-Saharan Africa is especially affected, with an estimated need for 15 million new teachers by 2030.

Today's teachers need holistic teaching and learning methods, training on technology and the use of Artificial Intelligence, and other cutting-edge practices. And teachers cannot do their work without safe working conditions, fair pay, and integrated support at the local, national and international level.

On the frontlines of the world's most severe humanitarian crises – in places like Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Sudan – teachers face unimaginable challenges, low pay – and sometimes no pay – overcrowded classrooms, limited technology, inadequate financial support, and life-threatening violence.

To address these interconnected challenges, ECW and its donors are investing in teachers across the globe.

In 2023 and 2024, ECW invested in our strategic partners to train over 144,000 teachers (56% of them female) on topics including pedagogy, gender and disability inclusion, disaster-risk reduction, and mental health and psychosocial support services. 35,000 teachers (48% female) were also financially supported with salary assistance, renumeration of volunteer teachers, and social provisions such as health care insurance or daycare facilities for teachers with children.

Together with national and international investments in education, ECW supports crisis-affected girls and boys with the foundational skills – such as reading, writing and mathematics – needed to become productive members of society.

Together, we must create enabling policies and provide adequate funding to ensure teachers everywhere have the safety, training and support they need to thrive in their profession. Teachers are frontline heroes tasked with educating our next generation of leaders.

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