Big Ideas
. 20/03/24
Why Literacy Is More Important Than Ever Before

We believe that literacy shouldn’t be out of reach for anyone. While there’s been great inroads, there continues to be a lot of work to do – and we celebrate the organisations doing it.

Did you know that illiteracy still affects one in five people in the UK?

Literacy is a ‘means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world,’ according to UNESCO.

Although 86% of the world population now knows how to read and write compared to 68% in 1979, 763 million adults across the globe are unable to develop these skills.

Two thirds of the global illiterate are women, while 250 million children are struggling to reach basic literacy levels.

Literacy is not just a point of access to educational and work spaces, it’s a key tool for individuals to establish their identity and critically assess situations and how to improve them.

For this reason, we’d like to highlight some programmes that are making literacy accessible to all.

Literature acessível

‘Accessible Literature’ by Instituto Incluir (Institute Include) is a non-profit programme aimed at promoting access to literature for children and young people with disabilities. 

They do this by making books available in multiple formats like braille, libras (the Brazilian sign language), audio description, and pictograms. The programme has enrolled 2,022 learners, 55% of which are girls and women.

Pandei

Short for the People Accessible Network for Digital Empowerment & Inclusivity, PANDei by Sarawak State Library is a Malaysian project that was developed in collaboration with Sarawak Multimedia Authority. Their goal? To deliver a free online learning course covering digital inclusivity awareness and skills to improve digital literacy in Malaysia’s Sarawak state.

School readiness through community participation

Set up by Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy NPC, this South African programme equips children, schools, and the community with the skills necessary to prepare Grade R (reception class) learners for formal schooling. 

The project involves creating appropriate play and learning environments for children and connecting them to local schools, to strengthen the link between community commitment and education.

From 2018 to 2021, roughly 12,000 learners completed the programme, 76% being girls and women.

This list is from the UNESCO Confucius 2022 Literacy Prize winners. To find out more about recent prize winners, visit Unesco.org

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