There is a lot of discussion on the study. Are we reading less or are we reading differently? Some argue that the decline is not actually a decline at all, but a transfer of attention. Rather than reading books and newspapers, teens and young adults are utilizing the internet for their news and entertainment. Hmmm…

Check out: The NEA site to learn more.

The attached picture is ME on Pearl Street in Boulder, CO while I was on my tour of conferences, campuses and bookstores in the Rockies.

Health Literacy as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.  Health Literacy is important for all adults; it is not just important for those who cannot read.  It is also and can be an issue for well-educated adults to know and understand health information needed to make everyday decisions.  Making good decision, health decisions, depends on having a high level of reading and comprehension skills.

As the page suggests, the following were the basic conclusions from the report, but there are much more in depth comments and findings within the report (natch):

Health literacy was reported using four performance levels: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. The majority of adults (53 percent) had Intermediate health literacy. About 22 percent had Basic and 14 percent had Below Basic health literacy. Relationships between health literacy and background variables (such as educational attainment, age, race/ethnicity, where adults get information about health issues, and health insurance coverage) were also examined and reported. For example, adults with Below Basic or Basic health literacy were less likely than adults with higher health literacy to get information about health issues from written sources (newspapers, magazines, books, brochures, or the Internet) and more likely than adults with higher health literacy to get a lot of information about health issues from radio and television.

USA Today just published a letter written by Sharon Darling, the president & founder of the National Center for Family Literacy. The letter was in response to an article last week (8/9/07, “Hispanic growth extends eastward“) about Hispanic population growth in the U.S. – here’s an excerpt:

…Questions were raised about how this population pattern will affect school budgets and how newcomers can be transformed into workers and taxpayers. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the statistics: The nation’s largest and fastest growing minority is also the only one that experienced a decline in literacy from 1992 to 2003. It’s no coincidence, then, that in 2001, Hispanic dropout rates were about four times higher than those for whites. But the dropout rate for Hispanic students who speak English well is only 16%, compared with 59% for those who do not, according to a 2003 report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The key to meeting the immediate and long-term needs of this population is to focus on intergenerational learning. The National Center for Family Literacy has piloted programs in large cities with substantial Hispanic populations … Family literacy is a solution on which everyone can agree.

Click here to read the article in full on USA Today’s website.

“Education is key to an effective response to HIV/AIDS. Studies show that educated women are more likely to know how to prevent HIV infection, to delay sexual activity and to take measures to protect themselves.”

Moreover, educated girls can transform an entire community. Go to the following link http://www.unfpa.org/hiv/women/report/chapter5.html to find out how educated women can empower themselves and others.

Additionally, this graph shows the stark difference between the prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection among Ugandan girls who are educated and those who are not.

Source: De Walque and J Whitworth, MRC Uganda (2002)

]]> http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2007/05/25/the-impact-of-educating-girls/feed/ 0 http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2006/11/10/a-positive-and-balanced-perspective-on-african-development/ http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2006/11/10/a-positive-and-balanced-perspective-on-african-development/#comments Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:30:10 +0000 admin http://www.betterworldblog.com/PermaLink,guid,7858d07d-bd6c-48ba-809b-b70f2ee57c23.aspx Every day, Google News sends me a number of articles with the keywords “literacy” and “Africa.” The majority only mention literacy in passing and then go on to offer a gloomy outlook on African development. Having worked with a number of African students and having visited Africa, I know that it is not the gloomy and hopeless place that many media outlets make it out to be. Where are the African news stories with a positive tone?

The following article is a breath of fresh air. Event though this piece, like most others, only mentions literacy in passing, it offers some very uplifting statistics on the state literacy and education in Africa . Recognizing the good along with the bad, this piece provides a balanced perspective on African development.

It is undeniable that there are a number of very serious issues that Africa and its many states must address to free themselves from the cycle of extreme poverty. I’m not suggesting that these topics should be ignored by the media or that they do not deserve attention. However, it is important these issues are approached in a constructive way and that impactful development is given the recognition it deserves. Positive reinforcement and positive thinking are key components of progress…

Has Africa finally turned a corner?

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

JOHANNESBURG , SOUTH AFRICA – With a decade of sustained economic growth, increasing demand for African minerals and oil, and a falling number of conflicts, the trend lines for some countries in sub-Saharan Africa are finally starting to look pretty good.

A new World Bank report, issued last week, has gone as far as to say that 2005 may be the year when Africa “turned the corner” from poverty and debt to prosperity and wealth. In a continent that was once almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, there are now 16 countries that have achieved annual growth rates in excess of 4.5 percent for more than a decade.

“Africa today is a continent on the move, making tangible progress on delivering better health, education, growth, trade, and poverty-reduction outcomes,” said Gobind Nankani, the World Bank vice president for the Africa region.

The African Development Indicators for 2006 report, of course, doesn’t pretend that all of Africa’s problems have been solved – from the spread of HIV-AIDS to continued conflicts in Sudan and Somalia to the persistent lack of basic services, such as water, sanitation, and education. But for a continent that has gotten used to hearing glass-half-empty analysis of what has gone wrong, the report has decidedly emphasized what has gone right.

“While economic outcomes are increasingly diverse, Africa has made near uniform progress in social outcomes, notably education and health,” explained John Page, the World Bank’s Chief Economist for the Africa Region.

It is the very diversity of Africa – with fast-growing oil states like Equatorial Guinea and rapidly-declining states like Zimbabwe – that makes any sweeping statement imprecise at best. Yet here are a few encouraging trend lines that are starting to have repercussions of the positive sort.

• The number of conflicts in Africa has dropped to just five in 2005, from a peak of 16 in 2002.
• During the past two decades, fertility rates have dropped in every African country. The greatest drop in fertility is found in Namibia to 3.8 in 2004 from 5.9 in 1990, followed by Rwanda, to 5.5 (2004) from 7.4 (1990).
• Several African countries, including Senegal, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Uganda and Ghana are on course to cut the number of people living in poverty by half by 2010. Cutting poverty is one of the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by 189 nations in New York in 2000.
• Enrollment in primary schools has increased continentwide to 93 percent in 2004 from 72 percent in 1990, and literacy rates have consequently risen to 65 percent in 2002 from 50 percent in 1997.

Low incomes, bad roads and ports

Yet amid these positive trends, there are darker clouds as well.

• Almost half of Africa ’s population still lives below the poverty line, which the World Bank defines as an income of less than $1 a day.
• African economies must grow at about an annual rate of 7 percent – on a par with India and China – in order to meet their target of cutting poverty in half by 2015. Governments must also either invest or encourage investment of at least 5 percent of their gross domestic product in infrastructure in order for their economies to continue growing.
• Inadequate roads, inefficient ports, and power outages have helped make Africa home to six of the 10 countries judged to be the most difficult environments in which to start a business, according to a recent World Bank study. The lack of foreign investment – Africa received just 1.6 percent of all foreign direct investment ($10.1 billion) in 2005 – means fewer jobs to relieve poverty.

Sarah Crowe, spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), says that even economic prosperity can bring its own set of new challenges.

“We’re now moving to a world of peri-urban slums and megacities bursting at the seams – such as Kinshasa and Lagos and Nairobi – with people moving to cities to find work,” says Ms. Crowe. Such big cities have been unable to keep pace with the population growth, and growing demand for clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Big cities are also key points for the spread of HIV-AIDS, a disease with devastating economic potential, since it targets primarily those who are in their prime working years.

“Unquestionably, there is a momentum there, but the big challenge for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) will be these gray areas,” adds Crowe.

Some in the aid community say that the World Bank’s report may have been overzealous in painting a picture of African progress. “Turned a corner?” chortled one American financier with decades of experience in African aid projects. “This is a maze we’re in here. There’s going to be lots of corners.

Greg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a think tank on strengthening African economic performance, argues that the most important trend seen in the World Bank report is showing that Africa can no longer be seen as a single entity.

“What the World Bank report is showing is the growing differentiation in the African continent, and the different problems between countries and regions,” he says. “This is contrary to the notion of African Unity.”

There are commodity-producing countries like Nigeria , Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan , and South Africa , and agricultural powerhouses like Kenya and Tanzania . There are landlocked nations like the Central African Republic , with little access to global markets, and rapidly globalizing countries like South Africa , Mauritius , Tanzania , and Benin .

Finally, there are countries like Nigeria , Ethiopia , Sudan , and the DRC that are so large and diverse that they are difficult to govern as a single entity. While some of these larger countries often have valuable resources, they will still have trouble emerging as winners in the global marketplace unless they start to change their system of governance, Mr. Mills says.

“The critical elementary differences between [African] countries are their regimes and their natural resources,” says Mills. “Since they can’t change their size and resources, the one thing they can change is the style of their government, and those that are generally performing better are the latter group,” which like Rwanda , South Africa , Botswana , and Uganda , have instituted substantial governmental reforms.

Ross Herbert, head of a research project on governance at the South African Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg , says that one of the best signs for Africa in the past decade is that fewer African leaders solve their problems today by printing more money.

But Africa ’s current prosperity – largely the result of global demand for commodities such as natural gas, oil, timber, copper, iron, coal, and cobalt – is a temporary window of opportunity that analysts say should not be wasted.

“Africa has to go out into the world and learn markets,” says Herbert. “Chinese companies went to Ghana and studied kinte cloth, and now you can buy Chinese cloth that emulates kinte that is cheaper than the local cloth.”

“That is how competitive other countries are,” he says. “We have to choose … to climb the ladder faster than other countries. And no one, other than Zimbabwe , is standing still.”

35 House seats, 33 Senate seats, governorships in 36 states, not to mention thousands of state legislative and other local races. There are also other ballot initiatives in 37 states, where voters have the opportunity to voice their opinions on such issues as the minimum wage, or stem cell research.

So obviously there is a reason to get out the vote!

You see, I believe this is a travesty that so many of those who have the right to vote are not taking advantage of this opportunity to have their voice be heard.  I know you care because you are here visiting our site.  Better World Books is engaged in a socially responsible business effort to improve the literacy rate in the US and around the world.  More importantly perhaps, Better World Books seeks to empower college students who care about this issue, and give them the opportunity to make a difference.   Illiteracy is a woman’s issue, it is a poverty issue, a hunger issue, a social justice issue, etc.  Whatever your cause, wherever lies your passion, illiteracy almost definitely has an impact on that issue.

So what does your vote have to do with that?  This is an important time in US History because our nation is arguably still the single most powerful and influential country in the world, and has the capability of making a huge dent in the lives of the hundreds of millions of illiterate individuals around the world.
What this means is your vote, is more then just casting a ballot for your local races, it has an impact which resounds far beyond your hometown communities or your state, because it has an international influence.  You have a responsibility to show your support for the candidates that reflect your convictions, and who are going to best represent you and your passions.

Go tell your friends, your family, your neighbors, whomever.  Tell everyone you know to go vote.  Voting is power. 

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to present at the 2006 Annual Fall Hunger and Homelessness Conference at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  This conference was attended by around 400 students from all around the country, and is actually the largest gathering of student leaders focused on hunger and homelessness issues.  I had a lot of fun, and was pleased to have the opportunity to connect with students from so many different schools.

For me, this was a singular experience because I actually attended this conference for the first time a number of years ago, when I was still a student myself.  I was, at that point, attending graduate school for Counseling.  Though I’d always been service-oriented, it wasn’t until later in my college career (very much through events like this conference) that I decided to give up the idea of counseling and focus my career in the non-profit/social venture realm.  I’ve always been very thankful to the folks at the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness for introducing me to so many caring and like-minded individuals and organizations.  Such conferences give students a great gateway into getting more involved, and are also great ways that students can raise their own awareness about different issues.  It was a landmark day for me to actually be presenting at this conference, and I was glad to see such a great turnout for Better World Books.  Thanks to all the students that attended!  We’re looking forward to working with you.

“Given the impact of the epidemic worldwide, with nearly 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the role of literacy and non-formal education needs to be fully acknowledged and promoted as part of the overall response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

The most at risk population for contracting HIV/AIDS are the rural poor, particularly woman and girls who comprise 70% of the world’s impoverished population.  Our international literacy partners Books for Africa , Room to Read and World Fund serve the most vulnerable communities by helping them obtain the life long tool of literacy which assists in the reduction of poverty and access to education and appropriate information with regard to health related issues.

Although, our book drives encourage the small and simple act of donating a used textbook, the collective impact and results of these acts of kindness are anything but small. What’s so exciting about Better World Books is that by addressing illiteracy, one of the factors contributing to disease and poverty, we are able to provide a tangible way to address the gargantuan statistics and despondency surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

]]> http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2006/10/09/literacy-in-the-context-of-survival/feed/ 0 http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2006/09/08/international-national-literacy-day/ http://blog.betterworldbooks.com/2006/09/08/international-national-literacy-day/#comments Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:14:58 +0000 admin http://www.betterworldblog.com/PermaLink,guid,1794d1a2-9fe4-4571-8dff-50890377805e.aspx Here’s a PR from National Center for Family Literacy, promoting International Literacy Day…

Help Celebrate International Literacy Day Sept. 8

Louisville , KY – (September 8, 2006) New learning opportunities await families and children every day, it’s just a matter of looking in the right places, including the local newspaper.

Celebrate International Literacy Day Sept. 8 and begin a ritual of lifelong learning with the 2006 Literacy Tabloid presented by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, Verizon and the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL).

Titled “Newspaper Inspiration: New Generation,” the 16-page tabloid is offered to newspapers and features engaging articles and activities, all geared towards making reading the local newspaper a family affair.

The tabloid ran in more than 400 newspapers throughout the nation last year with a combined circulation of more than 25,000,000.

“Newspapers provide a daily source of learning opportunities for parents and children and are especially important even in this age of MP3 players and podcasts, instant messaging and other high-tech ‘infotainment’,” said Sharon Darling, president & founder of NCFL.

The literacy information and activities included in the tabloid are drawn from the latest research from NCFL’s qualified experts including:

•        Activities to improve reading and math comprehension

•        Parent resources

•        Word games

•        Literacy volunteer opportunities

Thirty-four million adults have such low literacy skills that reading newspapers or books to their children or filling out a job application is nearly impossible.

“Making reading the newspaper a family experience will give parents quality time with their children while instilling a love of reading and desire to know more about their world,” said Verizon Foundation President Patrick Gaston.

The free tabloid comes in InDesign and PDF files on a CD and can be ordered at the NAAF Web site at www.naafoundation.org/foundation/LitTab06/.

For more information, call Marvin Young of NCFL at (502) 584-1133 x173.

About NCFL:

The National Center for Family Literacy, the worldwide leader in family literacy, was founded in Louisville in 1989. NCFL has impacted 1 million families and trained 150,000 teachers, practitioners and advocates.  To learn more or to donate to this effort, call 1-877-FAMLIT1 or visit www.famlit.org.