With national economies and civic participation more dependent than ever on an educated and literate citizenry, the world education community is faced with multiple and serious challenges. On the one hand, agencies which support or engage in literacy work need to be more realistic about what can be achieved within budget constraints. Such realism entails lowering expectations about major changes in individual, social, and economic outcomes, while at the same time holding literacy service providers to higher standards of accountability and professionalism. As in formal schooling, literacy and adult education do not provide a magic answer for any society, but they are part and parcel of all aspects of national development. On the other hand, agencies can enhance adult literacy programmes by:

Building a more solid knowledge base for field-based innovations,

improving professional development and human resources capacity,

providing better pathways from non-formal youth and adult literacy programmes into the formal school system,

combining non-formal programmes for adults and early childhood programmes,

taking advantage of new technologies, and

investing resources in assessment, evaluation and monitoring, surveys and applied research, and ·

creating new synergies and collaborations between governmental and non-governmental agencies.

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