Remind me of calendar occasions
Literacy gives people tools with which to improve their livelihoods, participate in community decision-making, gain access to information about health care, and much else besides. Above all, it enables individuals to realize their rights as citizens and human beings (UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message 2009).
"New technologies, including mobile telephones, also offer fresh opportunities for literacy for all. We must invest more, and I appeal to all Members States and all our partners to redouble our efforts – political and financial – to ensure that literacy is fully recognized as one of the most powerful accelerators of sustainable development. The future starts with the alphabet." - UNESCO Director-General, 2015.
In a world of enormous wealth, in a world in which education and knowledge are the necessary passports to a better life, the scale of illiteracy is truly staggering.
Approximately 776 million adults - most of them women - have no secure command of the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy.
Seventy-five million children are not in school.
And even for those who get a start on their education, drop-out rates are very high.
Yet it wouldn’t take much to change the appalling status quo.
(International Literacy Day. Resolution 1.141 of the 14th session of the UNESCO General Conference)
Source: un.org | unesco.org
A bridge from misery to hope