Empowering Women and Girls

Literacy Training in Asia and the Pacific

More than 900 million people the world over lack access to basic reading and writing skills. Two-thirds of those people live in Asia, with the substantial majority in South Asia. Literacy levels are especially low among girls and women in South Asia, carrying grave implications for HRD in that subregion. In a recently-completed three-year, Japanese-funded project, ESCAP collaborated with a number of NGOs and government agencies to promote literacy for girls and women in South Asia.

Six years after the adoption of the World Declaration on Education for All and its Framework for Action to Meet Basic Needs, far too many people worldwide remain without the essential skills of reading and writing. South Asia, the cradle of some of the world's greatest civilizations, with early traditions of recorded language, has ironically been unable to provide large numbers of its people with basic literacy skills. Marked by high fertility rates and a variety of other socio-economic and cultural obstacles, South Asia is plagued by literacy rates that are considerably lower than those in many other parts of the Asia-Pacific region. The exception is Sri Lanka, where a strong commitment to basic education has raised literacy rates to a level comparable to those of Southeast Asia.

Despite the low literacy levels prevailing in most of South Asia, substantial progress has indeed been achieved. In almost all of the countries of the subregion, the absolute number of literate people doubled in the past two decades. Nevertheless, as the accompanying self-expanding chart (The South Asian Backlog) makes painstakingly clear, much work remains to be done. It is not only the low overall literacy rates in South Asia that is a cause of concern. The sharp difference in literacy rates between men and women is another (The Gender Backlog).

Against this background, ESCAP initiated a project in 1992 to promote literacy among girls and women in South Asia. The project was implemented with the collaboration of the regional office of UNESCO and several country offices of UNICEF. The project was based on the premise that more effective coordination and collaboration between concerned government agencies and NGOs at both the central and local levels could extend the provision of educational opportunities to great numbers of prospective learners in South Asia. It aimed to mobilize and strengthen organizations running literacy programmes in five South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

A regional workshop provided literacy trainers with the specific skills required for project implementation, such as gender sensitization activities and development of core curricula units. They subsequently disseminated the knowledge gained through organizing five national workshops, the next step in the project. At these workshops, curricula units, textbooks and teacher's guides were developed in the local languages. The third step of the project required the participants of the national workshops in each country to serve as master trainers for each of the four to five local-level organizations that had beenselected to participate in the respective national demonstration projects. Finally, each of these organizations, in turn, took responsibility for training a number of local women's groups using the teaching materials developed. In this way, the project generated a maximum "trickle down" effect at the grassroots level.

Three important lessons were learned during the course of project implementation. First, it was found that the quality of the learning materials is crucial to the success of any literacy programme. Maintaining learners' interest through curricular materials that emphasize direct relevance to their daily lives is a critical factor in combating the ever-threatening problems of motivation and dropout. Secondly, throughout the programme there was evidence of a strong negative relationship between women's literacy and fertility. This had important implications for the targeting of illiterate women. Finally, close and constructive collaboration among the participating organizations at the national and local levels was found to be crucial for successful project implementation.

ESCAP has translated some of the literacy training materials developed under the project in a publication titled Functional Literacy for Women's Empowerment in South Asia. The book also provides an overview of all the curricula units prepared under the project. Finally, it includes some practical tips for literacy training text development.

Over its three-year lifetime, the project involved a total of more than 25 NGOs and government agencies. Training was provided for more than 350 literacy trainers, who then conducted literacy training courses for more than 8,000 learners in the five participating countries. Some 20 packages of literacy training materials were developed for use in further training programmes. The project served as a demonstration of the value of hori zontal and vertical integration in dealing with the subregion's literacy problem. The project was able to achieve this with a relatively small budget.

It is clear from the project, that because of the serious resource constraints facing governments in South Asia, reliance on non-formal approaches as a supplement to formal education is essential if universal literacy is to be achieved within the foreseeable future in the subregion.

ESCAP is currently implementing two follow-up projects. Both projects were started in 1996. One is aimed at designing post-literacy programmes in South Asia. The other project is geared to capacity builiding for literacy training in some countries of South-East Asia and the Pacific.