Literacy is a component of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. September 8 – International Literacy Day – is a day for Governments, civil society and stakeholders to highlight improvements in literacy rates, and reflect on remaining literacy challenges.

This year’s theme is ‘Literacy in a Digital World’ and UNESCO is hosting a special two-day event to examine what kind of literacy skills people require in order to navigate our increasingly digitally-mediated societies. The event will also explore effective literacy policies and programmes that can leverage the opportunities that the digital world provides.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by world leaders in September 2015, promotes, as part of its agenda, universal access to quality education and learning opportunities throughout people’s lives. Sustainable Development Goal 4 has as one of its targets ensuring all young people achieve literacy and numeracy and that adults who lack these skills are given the opportunity to acquire them.

CFUW’s Sustainable Development Series is designed to unpack the concept of the SDGs and repackage it in bit size format for people to gain a better understanding of the SDGs.  We hope that clubs will read, join the conversation and perhaps come up with their own initiatives to achieve gender equality by 2030.

Read International Literacy Day (opens in new tab), personal accounts in prose and poetry shared by Cheryl Hayles, VP International, and her team, that bring to the surface meaningful or memorable life experiences that others may be able
to relate to.

Let us know if there is anything we can do to help you launch an SDG initiative and if you are doing anything specific to International Literacy Day.