Global Literacy Matters

Rani Jha, director of the Institute, says Mithila art represents not only the artists, but other women as well. "My paintings do not only concern the position of women in Bihar, but in all of India. I show that in one of my paintings, where I show a girl reaching up and wanting to touch the moon. In education, in the corporate sector, and in athletics the rainbow of hope has risen for these women and they see that with astonishment. Decade after decade women are changing and remodeling themselves. Women who have been educated have hope, but those two generations back are cursed and weep for their pathetic plight.” Mithila painting is an ancient art form in the Likhiya, literally meaning “writing,” style. The Mithila Art Institute, located in Madhubani, India, gives uneducated and non-literate women across the entire caste spectrum in India an incredible opportunity to use their talent and create magnificent pieces. Using only ink as their tool, these women believe they are wr...

Education and literacy statistics are staggering—or rather, the low levels of literacy and quality education around the world. One teacher in Mexico and an educational technology professor in India, among others, are experimenting with innovative ways to address these problems, since traditional fixes (money, more teachers, etc.) are not always available. Many of ProLiteracy’s international programs use student-inspired programs, so the skills learned can be used immediately in the student’s daily life.   Not only is this useful for the adult learners who often have little time to play catch up in their education, but it is similar to how humans learn, according to recent research. According to this article , Sugata Mitra was chief scientist at a company in New Delhi, India, that trains software developers. His office was on the edge of a poor neighborhood, and on a hunch one day, he decided to put a computer into a nook in a wall separating his building from the neighborh...

Tens of thousands of previously non-literate Afghans can now read, thanks to the five-year NATO-led $200 million literacy program for the Afghan national security forces. With fewer than 28 percent of adults who can read and write, non-literacy in Afghanistan is exacerbated by decades of war and disruptions in public education. Non-literacy among Afghans of military age was a major hurdle for the NATO coalition in Afghanistan, as recruits couldn't follow basic written instructions or read manuals for new weapons and equipment. NATO set up a course to teach basic reading skills to expand literacy among the new Afghan army and police forces. More than 220,000 members have been trained in basic reading and more than 70,000 have achieved a level of functional literacy. 50,000 more recruits are in the program currently, and the Afghan government plans to continue the program after the end of NATO involvement next year. Fewer than 1 million Afghan children were enrolled in school i...

Saakshar Bharat is “the world’s largest adult education program” and it aims to make 70 million adults literate by 2017. Only 62.8 percent of India’s population over age 15 can read and write, according to the CIA World Factbook. [1] With a total population in India of more than 1.2 billion people, that translates to more than 446 million Indians who cannot read and write, and does not factor in age-appropriate reading levels or numerical literacy. To combat this, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched Saakshar Bharat in 2009 as an initiative of the Indian Department for School Education and Literacy (DSEL). [2] Saakshar Bharat places special emphasis on female literacy in India. Anu Priya, a representative of a village from Villupram in Tamil Nadu said 2,000 villagers were being taught. They had held six exams so far. The next batch of 114 adult students was well prepared for the next exams, she said. "The people have learnt a lot of things. No...

According to UNESCO, “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.” Literacy is linked with socio-economic progress and is no longer only about the basic technical skills of reading and writing. Take, for example, women in the fishing village of Tanjung Benoa, Indonesia, who recently participated in financial literacy training to improve their skills as the finance manager in their families. The training included simple but crucial tips on financial literacy in an attempt to combat the economic and social challenges the residents face daily, including a lack of understanding on money management and limited access to information. Standard Chartered Bank and the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry organized the training. The bank has conducted training programs and financial discussions for more than 500 female microentrepreneurs throughout ...

As the school year gets underway here in the United States, UNICEF and the Malian Ministry of Education are working to ensure that the same can be said for Malian school children on October 1, the beginning of their school year. Due to political and environmental conflict in the country and region, the Malian Ministry of Education estimates 800,000 children have had their schooling interrupted. Many schools lack basic necessities for the 2013-2014 school year, including benches for the classrooms and notebooks for the students. UNICEF representative in Mali, Francoise Ackermans, said, “An educated child is becoming a citizen of his own country and of the world. This is one of the basic rights of every child. This is in the constitution in Mali – that every single child has the right to free education, to free quality education. We are far from there. We have to commit ourselves to work together on that.” To attend to the education needs of schoolchildren in Mali, UNICEF needs $2...

According to UNESCO, “over 84 percent of the world’s adults are now literate.” While this is an encouraging statistic, representing an 8-percentage point increase since 1990, it still leaves more than 774 million adults around the world who cannot read or write. September 8 is International Literacy Day. UNESCO declared the day in 1966 to raise awareness of literacy issues around the world. This year’s theme is “Literacies for the 21st Century,” reflecting the idea that literacy is the cornerstone of peace and development today since literacy is at the heart of basic education for all. An international colloquium on this issue will be held at UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters on Monday, September 9, as part of the celebration for International Literacy Day. Opened by the Director-General, the event will bring together ministers and deputy ministers of education, development and culture from Afghanistan, Benin, the Republic of Chad, India, Namibia, Pakistan, and Senegal, along with repres...

The Gender Statistics in South Africa study revealed that South African men are overall economically better off than South African women. South African men have higher annual expenditures, lower unemployment rates, and longer life expectancies. “Even in death, the registration of women who have died is much lower compared to the registration of dead men. That happens because there is nothing to inherit from a woman and a lot to inherit from a man,” said statistician-general Pali Hehohla. The inequality between South African men and women is even more apparent in the black population. The extensive inequality gap between the black and white populations is stemmed from the South African apartheid that existed from 1948 to 1991. Black men and women were forced to live in overcrowded townships and had poorly funded schools. Due to poor educations and oppression, black South African women have the lowest employment rate of 30.8% while white men have the highest at 72.6%. Learners ...

Last week the Minister of State for Education in Nigeria, said the Federal Government has released N1 billion as part of efforts to boost Adults and Non-Formal Education in the country. Mr. Wike made the statement at a workshop organised by the Department of Continuing Education and Extension Services in conjunction with National Commission for Mass literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education, and UNESCO. He said the fund was in the custody of UNESCO to enable it to work with other stakeholders to revitalize adult literacy and non-formal education in the country. The minister, represented by the Deputy Director, Nomadic Education Commission, Kaduna, Ibrahim Yemta, said President Goodluck Jonathan had set up a committee to revitalize the sector. He said the committee met with stakeholders in the six geo-political zones to identify problems affecting the sector and find lasting solutions to such problems. In his address, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Univ...

ProLiteracy celebrates women around the world today who are changing their lives and communities through literacy! The majority of our programs internationally serve women. Since 1991 ProLiteracy’s partner programs have provided effective literacy instruction to more than 2,000,000 of the world’s disadvantaged women. Through literacy our partners help women like Nang Tat break out of traditional cultural practices that don’t allow them to pursue opportunities for education. Nang Tat was one of the first young woman in her village to complete a literacy course and be trained as a teacher. She is from the Kavet ethnic minority group, in the remote Lamuey Oh Village of Ratanakiri Province in northeastern Cambodia. Kavet women are extremely marginalized—many are forced to remain unemployed or to work as laborers in rice fields earning low wages. After learning to read and write, Tat felt it was important to help other women in her village learn how to read and write in t...

The fight for literacy has recently seen a great deal of success in South Africa. The country’s Kha ri Gude literacy program reported that it has registered more than two million adults for basic literacy education since its inception in April of 2008. The government-sponsored campaign consists of a massive network of volunteer educators who oversee a minimum of 18 students each year. These educators are just one part of a hierarchy of local supervisors and district coordinators who report to the Department of Basic Education. Through this system, Kha ri Gude is able to not only distribute hundreds of thousands of sets of comprehensive curriculum materials, but also collect learner portfolios to measure and assess students’ skill levels upon completion of the program. The result is that more than 40,000 literacy classes take place across South Africa each year, and 80 percent of those enrolled complete the six-month program. The program’s efforts are dedicat...

Good news for those interested in adult literacy in Pakistan: The Pakistani government recently laid out plans to establish more than 4,000 adult literacy centers across the country by the end of 2015.   According to the Daily Times , Sheikh Waqas Akram, Pakistan’s federal minister for education and training, stressed the importance of higher literacy and education rates throughout the Islamic world. Supported in part by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), this initiative seeks to open 100 community learning centers, 100 Quranic literacy centers, and 100 functional literacy centers in each of the 57 districts of the country. Though Pakistan’s literacy rates are as high as 97 percent in Islamabad and other urban regions, more rural areas of the country see rates of as low as 20 percent.   The target overall literacy rate for 2015 is 65 percent, which would require a 17 percent increase over the course of the program.