Today is International Literacy Day, and this year the theme is “Literacy and Women’s Empowerment”—a reminder to us all of the need for increased commitment to literacy, especially for girls and women. This theme reinforces and adds a particular focus to the United Nation’s Literacy Decade efforts to encourage a world-wide commitment to issues of literacy.
One of the multitude of events happening around the world in celebration of the day is the award ceremony for UNESCO 2010 International Literacy Prizes, which recognize innovative approaches to literacy education and is taking place at the organization’s headquarters, in Paris. UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize, sponsored by the Republic of Korea, will be given to projects in Cape Verde and Germany, and programs in Nepal and Egypt will be receiving the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy, supported by the People’s Republic of China. You can find the complete list of winning projects and honorable mentions here.
Also happening today, following the awards ceremony, is the launch of a very welcome and potentially transformative initiative: the Knowledge and Innovations Network for Literacy (KINL). Created with support from Verizon Foundation and Microsoft, the Network, which will be operational beginning November 1, will work as a virtual workplace where literacy researchers and practitioners can share knowledge and debate literacy topics online, with the goal of generating new ideas and practices.
Let us know how you are celebrating the day at your school, library or household. And keep in mind that, in the US, one way you can show your support for the right to literacy is by signing this declaration. Before delivering it to President Obama, ProLiteracy is sending the declaration scroll around the country to gather signatures from individuals and mayors.
We all deserve a world in which children and adults have the literacy skills they need to lead happy, productive and fulfilling lives, so let’s each do our part—and every little bit counts!— to promote literacy.
You can find PaperTigers’ archived Literacy issue here. To see all our literacy-related blog posts, click on the “World Literacy” category, on the sidebar.