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The UNESCO prizes are awarded annually in recognition of particularly effective contributions to the fight against illiteracy
Rajasthan's Directorate of Literacy and Continuing Education has been awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (UNESCO's) Confucius Literacy Prize for 2006 for its Useful Learning through Literacy and Continuing Education Programme in one of India's poorest and largest states. A project from Pakistan won the annual award for innovative literacy projects for women, adolescents and other marginalised populations.
The Rajasthan project was one of two winners of the US$ 20,000 Confucius prize (established with China), the other being Morocco's Ministry of National Education, a national literacy initiative designed specifically for marginalised adolescents in rural areas.
The Rajasthan project was honoured for significantly raising literacy levels among both men and women, in the last decade, and promoting gender equality and women's empowerment through the development of an innovative adult education programme. The programme includes 15-day educational camps for women covering subjects like vaccination, sanitation, childcare, family planning, environmental issues and self-help.
The programme features vocational skills camps and supports self-help groups of newly literate women, to promote livelihood-generating activities, and supports the sale of products made by self-help groups. Credit and loan facilities are also made available. The programme, which also targets men, runs campaigns on health and vaccination, personal hygiene, safe drinking water, water conservation and environmental issues. Importantly, it has been extended to marginalised populations such as people serving prison sentences and migratory cattle-breeders, for whom mobile literacy centres are run.
"The UNESCO prizes are awarded annually in recognition of particularly effective contributions to the fight against illiteracy, one of UNESCO's priorities," said the agency. "They call attention to the efforts of thousands of men and women who devote themselves year after year to advancing the cause of literacy for all."
The National Commission for Human Development of Pakistan won the US$ 20,000 International Reading Association Literacy Prize for a national programme that provides literacy classes to adults and out-of-school children, collects data through door-to-door surveys and encourages community involvement in the enrolment of children in schools.
Projects from Cuba and Turkey were other winners of the UNESCO prize. The two US$ 20,000 King Sejong Literacy Prizes, created by South Korea, went to the Mother Child Education Foundation (Turkey), which has developed teaching strategies for underprivileged girls, and to the Youth and Adult Literacy and Education Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Pedagogical Institute of Cuba, for its work in more than 15 countries, notably Ecuador and Venezuela.
The winners will receive their prizes from UNESCO on International Literacy Day, September 8.
Source: www.unesco.org, June 20,
2006
www.zeenews.com, June 21,
2006
www.un.org/news, June 20,
2006
PTI, June 20, 2006
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