Last week, Hemja VDC was declared as Kaski’s first village with hundred percent literacy rate. This was possible due to the literacy campaign launched by the Non-formal Education Center.
This is a remarkable event that demonstrates how important literacy is to individuals, communities and societies. The people in Hemja have recognized how essential literacy is for their career aspirations and their quality of life.[break]
They have learned first-hand that literacy provides access to the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to live better lives and to shape brighter futures. They know that literacy is a powerful protection against poverty because it allows participation in the societies and economies of the twenty-first century.
Former UN Secretary, Kofi Annan, once said “literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.” This bridge is robust and reliable indeed. Those who are literate have a marked advantage over those who cannot read and write. Literate people gain life skills that enable them to address the challenges they may face in life. Illiteracy, on the other hand, very often means poverty.
Literacy is not only the ability to read and write, but also to understand various forms of communications such as maps, number systems, symbols, body language, etc. It encompasses the abilities to understand and use alphabetic and number systems or dominant symbols of a culture for personal development.
Today, 84 percent of the world’s population has these abilities, compared to the low figure of 65.9 percent in Nepal. This means that more than one third of Nepal’s population can neither read nor write. And the majority of them are girls and women. Many of them will remain excluded from the benefits of new technologies and stay at the margins of the ever growing e-connected knowledge societies.
Millions of illiterates in Nepal are among the country’s most vulnerable people. And illiteracy is at the root of their exclusion.
It is for this reason that the UN system in Nepal focuses its development efforts over the coming years on these 19 vulnerable group.The United Nations Development Framework (UNDAF) 2013-2017 is set to address structural causes of vulnerability, includingunequal access to economic opportunities and basic services such as education and health, lack of access to governance processes and institutions, and remoteness and the localized effects of climate change.
The UN country team in Nepal works closely with the government to combat illiteracy on various fronts. For example, it helps children to learn to read and write. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) supports the government and local partners to provide out of school children a second chance for learning, so that they can acquire basic literacy, numeracy and life skills through non-formal education. A good illustration for this type of intervention is the Girls Access to Education (GATE) program, which provides alternative education for girls between 10 and 14 years of age. Another example is the Urban Out of School Children program, which addresses the needs of working children who are unable to attend formal education or have dropped out. This curriculum too offers basic literacy, numeracy and language skills. Through completion of these courses, thesegirls and boys will obtain sufficient learning capacity which would help them in their transition into mainstream formal education.
It is very well known that providing school meals greatly impact the literacy status of children. The World Food Programme (WFP) therefore supports the government’s school feeding program for children in the most food-insecure areas in the far and mid western hills and mountains. Approximately 200,000 children in these regions, where poverty remains one of the greatest challenges for many families, are benefitting from the school meals. The school feeding program complements the government of Nepal in its efforts to implement the Food-for-Education projects by providing each child with nutritious meals during school days. This program has clear educational, health and social benefits. Enrollment and attendance rates, especially among girls, increase. Children’s physical energy and alertness which enables them to complete the basic education cycle, get stronger. And the meals encourage families to keep their children in school and show them the way out of poverty and hunger through quality education.
But to combat illiteracy in a sustainable manner, the government needs a greater capacity to plan and implement nationwide literacy campaign as aimed through the recently launched Literate Nepal Mission.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) supportsthe Non-formal Education Centre of the Ministry of Education in strengthening its evidence-based planning and programming. This includes enhancing the capacity of government officials and grassroots level practitioners working in hundreds of community learning centers across the country. It further includes the development of literacy materials, in Nepali and in local languages,to be used in the literacy classes to ensure quality education for all.
It is through these initiatives that Nepal comes closer to achieving the fourth Education for All goal that aims toachieve a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women.
Literacy is often very closely linked to the other education challenges that Nepal is facing. For example, completing school does not guarantee that one isliterate. Many of those enrolled in schools or literacy classes do not participate regularly and are unable to successfully complete school education or literacy programs. This is caused by the unwillingness among participants to attend literacy classes. This is due to the weak linkages between formal and non-formal education, inadequate and irrelevant learning materials, poor linkages to income-generation and employment opportunities, lack of continuous learning provisions, and low quality of teaching.
There is a crucial need for a new approach to overcome Nepal’s literacy challenges. It demands commitment from all stakeholders. It also requires well planned policies and programs to meet the needs of all people,so that they can compete for a good standard of living in Nepal and abroad.
With less than three years before we reach 2015, we are racing against time. We need to act quickly to guarantee literacy for all the people of Nepal. Literacy is much more than an educational priority—it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child in Nepal can use the literacy bridge to move from misery to hope.
The authors head Nepal offices of UNICEF, WFP and UNESCO respectively
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