IMPACTFUL NewTek helped create a truly international event
Each year, the WLF holds their World Literacy Summit in Oxford, UK. It brings together experts and innovators from all over the planet, to make the foundation’s targets a reality. In association with the summit, the WLF holds its annual awards show. The 2021 edition was due to be held on International Literacy Day in early September. But, despite many countries patting themselves on the back for declining Covid-19 infections, the pandemic was far from under control, and doing an in-person event was still ill-advised. After a successful virtual event in 2020, it was clear the wide span of nominations made it imperative to open it to the whole world. Award-winners were selected from over 600 nominees, in seven categories – including a new category recognising rapid and creative responses to the pandemic’s effect on education. “Because of the huge uptake in nominations this year, it made sense to make the show globally
ore than two billion adults lack essential literacy skills for quality employment. And, of these, 750 million are without even basic reading and writing skills. Around
258 million young people are out of school – that’s more than 10% of the world’s children not getting an education. In 2003, the World Literacy Foundation (WLF) was founded to increase reading and writing comprehension in children and adults. The foundation’s goals are “to raise global literacy standards, provide free access to quality education materials, innovate solutions that target wide-scale illiteracy and encourage lifelong learning”. Illiteracy has crippling economic impacts, and no area is untouched. According to a recent WLF report, around 15% of adults in England struggle to read and write at a basic level, and can be described as ‘functionally illiterate.’
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