The Power of Words: Global Illiteracy and the Campaign to End It

Around the world, nearly 800 million people are illiterate. That means one out of every 10 people would have a hard time reading this sentence. While global literacy rates improved over the last 25 years, progress has since stalled, especially for women and girls. And this isn’t only a developing world problem – 32 million Americans can’t read and write.

Today, literacy is as complex as it is powerful. What it means to be literate in different contexts is changing rapidly as digital skills become increasingly important and technology grows more sophisticated and more available. These advances create new and exciting opportunities to tackle basic literacy challenges, and produce new literacy challenges in their own right.

Educators and organizations all over the world are working hard in their communities to understand and address these issues. Literacy organizations such as Room to Read and Reading Partners are facing these challenges head-on whether in India, South Africa or right here in San Francisco. And Project Literacy, a major new campaign convened by Pearson in partnership with GOOD Magazine and others, seeks to make significant and sustainable advances in literacy over the next five years so that by 2030, no child will be born at risk of poor literacy.

Join us for this panel discussion to learn more about the scale of global illiteracy, the dimensions of the crisis as it breaks down along gender and class lines and the opportunities for intervention.

Speakers Erin Ganju, CEO and Co-Founder, Room to Read, Kate James, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Pearson, and Michael Lombardo, CEO, Reading Partners, will be in discussion.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1433