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World Cup stars, carriers back 1GOAL mobile campaign to support education

The GSMA, carriers, pop stars and royalty are getting behind 1GOAL: Education for All, the FIFA-backed legacy project for the 2010 World Cup that features a worldwide mobile campaign.

Mobile companies from across the globe have come together to offer more than 1.5 billion people an opportunity to show their support for 1GOAL with 1 billion-plus text messages going out to people in the coming weeks. Queen Rania of Jordan, professional soccer players, Shakira and Telefónica Group have all joined up to support the campaign.

?Using the platform of this year?s World Cup in Africa, the 1GOAL campaign is calling on governments to live up to their promise to put every child in education by 2015,? said Mark Smith, director of the GSMA, London. ?By the current rate of progress, some 56 million children still won?t be in school by 2015?that is basic primary school education.

?We?re asking people to sign up and support this by responding to a text message with the keyword YES or by entering their email on the 1GOAL Web site,? he said. ?It is an e-petition, if you will, to ask governments to live up to their promises to support education.

?We?re using the reach and scale of mobile to engage with people around this message of education?even social networks have nothing like the scale and reach of mobile around the world.?

Backed by the soccer world and FIFA, 1GOAL seeks to get every child into school by 2015, rallying support from footballers?soccer players?and fans across the world.

The campaign is backed by 140 of the biggest names in soccer and from the entertainment world?Shakira?s Barefoot Foundation, Jessica Alba and Kevin Spacey are supporting 1GOAL.

An estimated $16 billion a year is needed to make universal education a reality, but currently only $4 billion is spent on primary education and 1GOAL is calling for further funding from both developing and rich countries to get every child in to a classroom.

1GOAL is an initiative to mobilise support to hold world leaders to these promises for 2015 and is run by the Global Campaign for Education. It is part of a large global education initiative.

Today 72 million children are still unable to go to school and this year 1GOAL and its partners are working to change this.

Founding carrier supporters of the 1GOAL mobile campaign include AT&T Wireless, Axiata Group Berhad, Batelco Group, Bharti-Airtel, CSL, Hutchison 3 Group, KT, MTN, NTT Docomo, Mobitel, Orascom Group, SingTel Group, Smart Communications, Softbank Mobile, SK Telecom, Telenor Group, Telefónica Group, TMN, Umniah, VimpelCom and Zain Group.

In the U.S., AT&T is supporting the 1GOAL campaign.

Global mobile campaign
Across all of its territories, Telefónica will be promoting the ?education for all? message as part of its long-standing objective to make a positive impact on economic, technological and social progress.

1GOAL has a target of getting millions of people to show their support for 1GOAL and already some of the biggest names in soccer such as Alessandro del Piero, Rio Ferdinand, Zinedine Zidane and Michael Essien have joined 8 million others to show their support for the campaign.

The outreach via the mobile companies will swell this even further. If just 1 percent of people sign up via the mobile campaign, a further 15 million people?the equivalent to the entire population of Holland?could join the campaign. 

Signups from the 1GOAL mobile campaign will be presented as a petition to world leaders at an education summit later this year urging both developing and developed countries to provide further funding for education.

People will be able to sign up by responding ?YES? to a free text message, by going to http://1goal.mobi on their handsets or by sending an email to .

In Japan, NTT Docomo is using 2D bar codes to drive its subscribers to the 1GOAL mobile site.

Handset manufacturers Nokia and Samsung will also be making a 1GOAL mobile application available for its customers.

Her Majesty, Queen Rania of Jordan, cofounder and cochair of 1GOAL, said that teaming up with the mobile phone industry, 1GOAL can now reach more than a billion people worldwide, making it the largest cause-related campaign in history.

The mobile campaign is being coordinated by the GSMA, which represents the global mobile industry.

The campaign includes a host of soccer-related downloads, such as player images and videos, as well as ringtones, wallpapers and smartphone applications, culminating in a text-message campaign calling for the support of billions of mobile users around the World Cup.

?The GSMA?s role is coordinating this campaign around the World Cup and building marketing collateral the partners can use to support this campaign,? Mr. Smith said. ?I can?t think of another cause-related mobile campaign on this scale?I don?t think it?s ever been done before.?