Today is International Literacy Day

Did you know?

• 773 million adults and young people lack basic literacy skills; that is a tenth of the world’s population.
• 617 million children and adolescents are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics;
• During the initial phase of the pandemic, schools were closed disrupting the education of 62.3 per cent of the world’s student population of 1.09 billion;
• Adult literacy and education were absent in initial education response plans, therefore many youth and adults with no or low literacy skills have had limited access to life-saving information.

As a church, we at St Michael and St George’s in White City are not afraid to speak up for justice and to be champions for change in the world. There are enough resources around the world to devote to ensuring education and literacy for all, if only the world’s priorities went to tackling these issues instead of preparing for war, following systems of unfair trade and greed etc. The charities that we support from this church, like Christian Aid and the United Societies partners in the Gospel run programmes to tackle illiteracy and to promote education amongst some of the world’s poorest communities, let’s remember them and the work of the United Nations tackling illiteracy in our prayers today. https://www.un.org/en/observances/literacy-day