What has education helped you achieve?
That was the question the CNN Freedom Project posed to Twitter users in the run up to World Against Child Labor Day on June 12, which this year focuses on how education can help end the cycle of poverty and underage workers.
The answers were as diverse as the respondents with your tweets showing just how much of an impact education has had on lives the world over.
To highlight the importance of education, we asked you to share your old school photos. People from all walks of life got involved, telling the world how education helped them get to where they are now.
Education can end child labor
According to the International Labour Organization, 120 million children between the ages of five and 14 are involved in child labor, with some 98 million working in agriculture.
For many of those children, going to school is impossible. Others have to fit their education around their work, making it harder to get skills they need to find decent jobs as adults. The result is that their own children in turn may need to work to support the family.
Conversely, if children receive quality education up until legal employment age, they are much less likely to fall into poverty — and if they are well employed as adults, they will not have to rely on their children to bring in additional income. That’s why the CNN Freedom Project is highlighting the value of education.
CNN anchors got involved with the initiative too, showing us how far they have come, thanks to a good education. “Education helped me to have lots of opportunities. My sports broadcast career began at university,” said sports anchor and correspondent Alex Thomas. While CNN’s Isa Soares said education helped her to “be insatiably curious, creative and critical.”
See the best submissions in the slideshow above — and check out all the submissions by following @CNNFreedom.