So September 08 was International Literacy Day, proclaimed by UNESCO. Like many of their earlier initiatives, Grammarly got in touch with me to (hopefully) promote some awareness and create a dialogue. Now, some basic research on Wikipedia spewed out the following:
“Some 775 million adults lack minimum literacy skills; one in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of them are women; 60.7 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.
According to UNESCO’s “Global Monitoring Report on Education for All (2006)”, South and West Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate (58.6%), followed by sub-Saharan Africa (59.7%), and the Arab States (62.7%). Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina Faso (12.8%), Niger (14.4%) and Mali (19%). The report shows a clear connection between illiteracy and countries in severe poverty, and between illiteracy and prejudice against women.”
Just some appalling stats to mull over; and sadly, I’m not surprised. However, I always take numbers with a pinch of salt, as most of these countries do not have standardised data collection methods. Anyway, as a citizen of a developing country, I have seen hope, I have seen more and more girls being educated… so may be we will get somewhere at some point…
Here’s the infographic from the Grammarly post
BookMark 