Within the framework of Dakar goal 4, the UN-Literacy Decade and UNESCO's Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), UNESCO is supporting Member States efforts to achieve the goal of a 50% improvement in adult literacy rates by 2015.

UNESCO's response in achieving this goal implies working simultaneously on four complementary fronts:

• Universal quality basic education for all children
• Scaling up and reaching out with relevant literacy provision to all youth and adults
• Promoting a literate environment and a literate culture at local and national level
• Integrating literacy in the struggle against structural poverty and injustice including gender discrimination

UNESCO promotes literacy for empowerment. This implies that the question is not what literacy can do for people but rather what people can do with literacy. UNESCO also advocates for literacy within the perspective of lifelong learning. Literacy should be seen as a continuous process that requires sustained learning and application. There are no magic lines to cross from illiteracy into literacy. Literacy lies at the heart of basic education and is the foundation for further learning opportunities. The emerging information and learning society requires the building of learning societies and learning communities. UNESCO does not advocate a single "model" of literacy. Recent political and socio-economic transformations have caused the evolvement of the literacy concept into a more complex notion of literacy. Within the plurality of literacies, fundamental changes of attitudes of entire societies towards literacy and learning are increasingly important.

UNESCO and UIL are working towards the creation of literate environments that are a key to advancing literacy. A literate environment is more than the presence of written materials, it also requires opportunities to use and further develop literacy related skills and competencies in all kind of situations and contexts. Furthermore it includes the availability of continuing education. Exclusion and discrimination continue to contribute to pockets of illiteracy, even within developed countries. The making of literate societies is one of the crucial challenges of the 21st Century.

The Institute helps meet these challenges with action-oriented and policy-driven research on literacy and policy practices, advocacy for promoting literacy, the development and implementation of effective monitoring and evaluation systems, networking and publications in order to promote innovative and empowering approaches to literacy. It works in partnership with many organizations to ensure that literacy in all its dimensions is integrated into the overall education agenda and sector-wide strategies.. This involves both global strategies and efforts at the national level to strengthen the capacities in Member States for designing and implementing relevant literacy programmes, especially for disadvantaged and excluded groups.

UIL's areas of action in the field of literacy include the overall coordination of UNESCO's LIFE Initiative (2005-2015), which is a strategy for collaborative action in support to the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012). Within these broader frameworks, UIL provides demand-oriented capacity-building, training and technical backstopping in Member States for the achievement of Dakar goal 4, with a particular emphasis on post-conflict countries, least developed countries and small islands. Research-based evidence - such as literacy in multilingual contexts - is made available to policy-makers and practitioners by UIL with the aim to bring forward culturally, linguistically and gender-sensitive literacy provision. The exchange of experiences through bringing together policy-makers, academics and practitioners and the dissemination of effective practice is also helping to promote good quality literacy.

Contact:
Ulrike Hanemann

UNESCO Literacy Portal
United Nations Literacy Decade

Google′s Literacy Project

www.google.com/literacy
www.google.de/literacy (German version)

European Project on Family Literacy (QualiFLY)

"Family Literacy"(FLY)

Literacy in prison