The Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) is designed as a global strate-gic framework through which national governments, NGOs, civil society, the private sector, UN agencies, and bilateral and multilateral agencies collectively revitalize and accelerate literacy efforts in countries where illiteracy poses a critical challenge. LIFE is a key strategic framework for the implementation of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD), which is led and coordinated by UNESCO. LIFE is an initiative to facilitate and promote the achievement of the Education for All (EFA) and UNLD goals. LIFE...

This issue looks at the relationship between literacy and HIV prevention education. It is the result of the Institute’s work on examining the contribution of non-formal education (NFE) to HIV prevention, carried out in collaboration with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) Working Group on Non-formal Education. It demonstrates how literacy (one of the key areas of non-formal education) is making a difference in HIV prevention through innovative approaches, where community participation and involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS are the main underlying...

This publication contains the results of the conference South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People that took place in Mexico City in 2005.

Articles were written by participants who presented their national programmes from the governmental perspective, which were reflected in the literacy policies, but there were also important contributions on basic education and competence recognition.

Download: Literacy, Knowledge and Development (PDF 4,21 MB)

Addressing the needs of 774 million illiterate women and men globally is indeed an enormous challenge. It requires coordinated initiatives on all fronts: enabling policy-making that considers literacy central to education and development; increasing allocations to one of the most marginalised and underfunded education sub-sectors; developing a relevant curriculum, an appropriate methodology and suitable materials; seeking ways in which literacy may be integrated into development concerns such as livelihood, employment, health promotion and citizenship; recognising and valuing the...

This publication examines the relationship between multilingualism and knowledge societies. It outlines the realities of knowledge societies while presenting linguistic challenges that arise when implementing them. It also discusses the interplay between linguistic choices and development.

Download: Du multilinguisme à la société du savoir: quelles stratégies? (From Multilingualism to Knowledge Societies: What Strategies Work Best?) (PDF 2.2 MB)

This publication results from a two-year international urban literacies project that investigated that many uses of literacy in urban environments of developing countries. Case studies from various countries are used to explore how litracy is sought and made use of by people in their lives and in their livelihoods.

Download: Urban Literacy: Communication, Identity and Learning in Development Contexts (PDF 16 MB)

This is a story about Mixquic, a small township situated on the southeastern edge of Mexico City, but it is also an account of a group of women who live there. These women rarely go very far from their homes, and when they do, it is to travel to neighboring pueblos, to visit a government office, or to purchase goods for their household. Downtown Mexico city is about three hours away by public transportation and a trip there takes almost all day.

Download: Discovering literacy: access routes...

The world continues to be marked by great scientific discoveries and technological strides that are fundamentally changing the physical, social, economic, political and even culture milieu of human beings. Unfortunately, however, certain important segments of the world population are neither able to participate in these transformations nor to appropriate them truly as their own. Such population groups appear disconnected from all of these developments. Africa- for it is Africa that interests us here- remains a continent that needs to engage in a veritable inner struggle for its own...

Demonstrating the normality of multilingualism and questioning those teaching systems grounded in monolingualism are the objectives of this study. The data comes from 30 African, Asian and Latin American countries. The study underlines the advantages of multilingual learning: preservation of identity, cultural richness and plurality.

Download: Towards a Multilingual Culture of Education (PDF 18,4 MB)

In many developing countries, literacy has been seen as the key to 'women's development' resulting in a proliferation of women's literacy programmes run by both Governments and Non-Governmental Organisations. Nepal is one such example of a country where literacy programmes have been used extensively as an entry point for involving women in development activities. My own experience of working in this field in Nepal has made me question what impact these literacy programmes have on women's lives: in particular, I have wondered whether there is a strong link between gaining literacy skills...