New female literacy initiatives

A UN Wire article titled “Investing in girls' and women's education advances global development goals” caught my eye the other day. I was required to sign up for these daily newsletters for my Model UN class last semester, but I find that it is now my favorite news source (sign up for free here). The article announces a partnership between UNESCO and the Global Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education to try and meet some of the Millennium Development Goals established in 2000.

A global lack of women’s education creates a foundation for many other women’s issues including women’s rights, their sexual and reproductive health, HIV rates, poverty, disease, abuse, and less fortunate outcomes for these women’s children as well. By working to raise women’s literacy rates and enrollment in secondary and higher education institutions, women will have better job/career opportunities, poverty will decrease, the welfare of their children will be improved, and they will improve their communities overall. Right now, a disproportionate two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are females.

This new partnership will soon launch the initiative titled “Better Lives, Better Futures” to specifically target the age group most at risk: young adolescent girls who face challenges in transitioning from primary to secondary education. Female literacy and education has been a long-standing international issue, but it is reassuring to know that new focus groups and fresh new initiatives are being launched all the time. Hopefully, we will eventually see changes in female literacy rates, and these and other Millennium Development Goals will be reached by the proposed deadline of 2015.

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I must admit I’ve never even thought about writing a letter to an editor or elected official. I’ve never been in a position like the one Aaron Friedman found himself in, or anything even similar to that. However, I suppose I would do the same thing if I were in his predicament and my quality of life was compromised by blaring car alarms. I can’t speak for all of my peers, but I know that within my social circle, I’ve never heard of anyone speaking out against an issue through public writing. We write articles for our school newspapers and write personal proposals or essays to get ourselves ahead (say, in our jobs/careers), but there isn’t any one cause or issue that immediately comes to mind in which someone I know spoke out for or against. I’m not so sure it’s laziness or lack of skill that prevents us from writing publicly, I think it’s just the fact that kids are either (1) disengaged from the civic or political world, or (2) they hold the belief that nothing can (or should) be done about an issue.

Again I wouldn’t want to speculate on why our generation is more politically disengaged---I can only speak for myself---but I know with me, I am very reluctant to speak out for the fear of sounding ignorant or being downright wrong. I feel that to form any sort of political opinion, you have to be an expert on the topic, and I’ve never explored an issue to that extent (nor found one that I was that personally invested in). I also feel that there are two sides to every story; there are always pros and cons, and who am I to decide who is right and who is wrong? As a young adult still trying to figure out my own personal values, beliefs, and political stances, I can’t even begin to try and project them onto other people.