1GOAL – an initiative aimed at ensuring every child in the world has the opportunity to go to school by 2015 – officially launched today, adding Telefonica and a number of World Cup footballers to its list of backers. Claimed to be the world’s biggest-ever mobile phone campaign, over one billion text messages will be sent in the coming weeks to drive support. 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. Handset vendors Nokia and Samsung will also be making available a 1GOAL mobile app for their customers.

Unveiled by Queen Rania of Jordan at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February, 1GOAL has the support of operators serving more than 1.5 billion people. Operators on board include AT&T Wireless, Bharti-Airtel, MTN, NTT Docomo, Orascom, Telenor, VimpelCom, and, now, Telefonica Group (which has 274 million customers across 25 countries). Focused around the buildup to this summer’s World Cup in South Africa, footballers including Michael Essien (pictured) and Rio Ferdinand, as well as FIFA itself, are on board, as well as entertainers Shakira, Jessica Alba and Kevin Spacey. The mobile campaign is being coordinated by the GSMA, and includes soccer-related downloads, as well as ringtones, wallpapers and smartphone apps, culminating in the text messaging campaign calling for the support of billions of mobile users.