Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion (Un­esco), it is es­ti­mat­ed that some 775 mil­lion adults around the world lack min­i­mum lit­er­a­cy skills.

This means that world­wide one in five adults is still not lit­er­ate. In ad­di­tion to this, about 60.7 mil­lion chil­dren do not at­tend school and many more at­tend oc­ca­sion­al­ly or drop out. This does not make for a good case of end­ing the cy­cle of poor lit­er­a­cy skills.

In T&T, 22-23 per cent of our peo­ple aged 15 and over are un­able to cope with every­day read­ing and writ­ing. That's al­most one in four Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans who are not lit­er­ate.

These sta­tis­tics were the re­sults of a 1994 Al­ta and 1995 UWI Na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Sur­vey. Al­though these sur­veys were done over a decade ago, it is high­ly un­like­ly that a sur­vey to­day would re­veal any pos­i­tive change.

Al­ta's sur­vey found that eight per cent of peo­ple over 15 years of age (which would have equat­ed to 62,000 adults) could not read even three of these words: to, at, love, sun, bet.

A fur­ther 15 per cent could on­ly read a lit­tle, adding an­oth­er 118,000 adults. Ac­cord­ing to these two sur­veys, at best, our lit­er­a­cy rate stood at 78 per cent in 1995 with some 180,000 adults un­able to cope with every­day ba­sic read­ing and writ­ing. Fifty years ago, Un­esco of­fi­cial­ly pro­claimed Sep­tem­ber 8 as In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day. This was done to ac­tive­ly en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ties world­wide to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy as an in­stru­ment to em­pow­er in­di­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties and so­ci­eties. Lit­er­a­cy is a part of Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 4 which, along with oth­er goals makes up the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Un­esco, the vi­sion of lit­er­a­cy in this con­text goes hand in hand with life­long learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with a spe­cial fo­cus on youth and adults.

The tar­get is that by 2030 "all youth and a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of adults, both men and women, achieve lit­er­a­cy..." (Un­esco, 2016).

In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day is cel­e­brat­ed by gov­ern­ments, pri­vate sec­tors, com­mu­ni­ties and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions around the world.

This year, Un­esco is cel­e­brat­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day un­der the ban­ner Read­ing The Past, Writ­ing The Fu­ture. On this day, many who have in­vent­ed and ex­e­cut­ed so­lu­tions which can dri­ve lit­er­a­cy to­wards achiev­ing the 2030 Ed­u­ca­tion agen­da, are award­ed with prizes.

More in­fo

In cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day lo­cal­ly, Al­ta reg­is­tered new stu­dents at li­braries na­tion­wide. Reg­is­tra­tion took place on Sep­tem­ber 6 and 7 at 11 na­tion­al li­braries and four se­lect­ed venues.

If you know an adult (16+) who needs to learn to read and write who may have missed our reg­is­tra­tion days, no fear.

?

Have them give us a call at 624-2582 as soon as pos­si­ble.