The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched a five-year global initiative called Education First that aims to raise the political profile of education and bring together a broad coalition of participants to improve access to and quality of education. The MacArthur-supported Brookings Institution's Center for Universal Education was tapped to serve as the Technical Secretariat for the first year of the initiative. MacArthur's efforts to strengthen innovation and practice in secondary education through its Girls' Secondary Education in Developing Countries initiative were discussed at the event.
