 This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A three-year effort in developing countries will seek to put 25 million children in school for the first time. Another goal of the Global Partnership for Education is to train 600,000 teachers. The partnership recently awarded nearly $170 million in grants to seven countries. These were the first grants since the organization changed its name a few months ago from the FastTrack initiative. FastTrack was founded in 2002. Charles Tapp is an advisor to the partnership. He says there had been a lot of evolution of the old FastTrack initiative, which was essentially something of a donor's club, I think. And what was clear from our perspective was that we were not just a funding entity. This was indeed a partnership. The partnership includes almost 50 developing countries, as well as donors, civil society groups, and teacher organizations. It also includes private companies, international development banks, and United Nations agencies. The latest grants were awarded to Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, and Timor-Leste. Mr. Tapp says the grant to Afghanistan is worth almost $56 million. He says the Afghan government has made a very strong commitment of allocating as much of its own resources as it can for education. Historically, Afghanistan has had some very, very well-educated people. They tend to come from sort of the urban centers. But obviously, given the recent troubles and problems in Afghanistan over the last 20 years or so, the quality of education has plummeted. Mr. Tapp says Ivory Coast received $41 million to help in its recovery from the recent political violence there. One goal is to get school feeding programs in place. Mr. Tapp says more countries are now looking for help from the partnership. Unfortunately, given the current global financial climate and the fact that there are still 67 million kids out of school around the world, demand for our financing seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. But many donor countries are reducing their spending. So, he says the partnership must show them that their money is being well spent. He says it's very clear that in the global partnership, partner countries, that you're seeing more kids getting to school for longer and for a better education. And as education improves, he says, so does the health of a country. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal.