Unesco's Contribution to Literacy Development Essay Sample

Literacy is more than just reading and writing and is considered a way of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication. It is not something that is easily avoided and is an integral part of everyday life. However, about 773 million youth and adults can not read and write and 250 million children are failing to obtain those basic literacy skills. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The organization seeks to better programs around the world in education, sciences, and culture. One major focus of UNESCO is literacy development. UNESCO works with several projects and organizations in order to achieve its goals of global education and literacy.

UNESCO takes part in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in which literacy is an integral part. This plan holds 17 important goals desired to be achieved in a 15-year plan. One of these goals is quality education. Within the goal of quality education, there are several goals for the education itself. These include helping countries with resources and implementing context-appropriate solutions in order to provide education remotely, ranging from hi-tech, low-tech to no-tech approaches. Also, seeking equitable solutions and universal access, ensuring coordinated responses, and facilitating the students returning to school to avoid an upsurge in dropout rates. This initiative focuses on better education on a global scale in an effort to enable upward socioeconomic mobility and reduce poverty. Over the past years, they have made several accomplishments. “The primary school completion rate reached 84 percent in 2018, up from 70 percent in 2000, and under current trends, is expected to reach 89 percent globally by 2030. In 74 countries with comparable data for the period 2011-2019, around seven in ten children aged three and four were developmentally on track in at least three of the following domains: literacy-numeracy, physical development, social-emotional development, and learning” (Educations-United Nations). Although they have made these strides toward better education, they recognize there is still much more to be done.

UNESCO has also partnered with Pearson on a Literacy Initiative which also shares the goals of the sustainable development project. “ This partnership seeks to show how, by taking a more inclusive approach, technology can contribute to helping all youth and a substantial proportion of adults achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030 – a target of the new Agenda for Sustainable Development” (About the Initiative). Project Literacy is founded by Pearson and is a “global movement that aims to make significant and sustainable advances in the fight against illiteracy so that all people – regardless of geography, language, race, class, or gender – have the opportunity to fulfill their potential through the power of words” (About the Initiative). The main goal is this initiative is to close the global literacy gap through research and sharing a diverse range of digital services.  Pearson brings together a diverse combination of people and organizations through Project Literacy to help unlock the full potential. UNESCO joins in with initiatives like this because it has a main focus on education as a basic human right and the foundation of their other goals such as peace and sustainable development.