Good afternoon everyone! I hope you had a nice lunch – you certainly had a beautiful location for it. I am extremely pleased to be here today on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development to celebrate the 50th anniversary of UNESCO’s International Literacy Day. I want to thank the Library of Congress for co-hosting this celebration. I certainly cannot think of a more fitting place to celebrate this day than in the largest library in the world – our nation’s oldest federal institution. I first used this library as a high school sophomore to research the relations between the United States and Eastern Europe. It helped me then and has been helping millions of other Americans throughout its distinguished history.

I also want to thank our co-sponsor, the Global Reading Network for helping organize this event.

And I want to give special thanks to Christie Vilsack who has been a tireless champion of our efforts to improve children’s reading skills, strengthen workforce development, and provide access to education in crisis and conflict settings. Thank you for your service and dedication, Christie.

And finally, and most importantly, I’d also like to acknowledge the Ministers of Education from Ghana, and Cambodia, and the high-level representatives from Ethiopia, Haiti, and Kenya who are in attendance.  Your countries are making strong progress on the literacy front, and, with your continued support and partnership, we will seize great opportunities.    

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A little over five decades have passed since UNESCO declared September 8^th to be International Literacy Day.

That same year, in 1965, the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradication of Illiteracy was held in Tehran. And the 88 countries in attendance unanimously agreed to link the Organization’s approach to literacy to economic and social development, and put forward the notion of “functional literacy.”

Over time, our vision for literacy has naturally evolved. Globalization and technology have not only increased the complexity of literate environments, but also influenced the challenges to learning.

And in today’s rapidly changing world – a world where knowledge is power – being able to recognize words on a page is simply not enough. It is only the first step.

Children need essential skills like problem-solving and creative thinking to be able to write the future. They need “transformative literacy.”  

The 2030 Agenda on education recognizes this need. By committing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world came together to recognize that learning is more than just getting children in school; that education is a driver for progress in other sectors; and that literacy is one of the keys to ending extreme poverty.

Just think about this, if all students in low-income countries left primary school with basic reading skills, research shows that upwards of 170 million people could be lifted out of poverty. That’s equivalent to a 12 percent drop in world poverty, a statistic too big to ignore.

So today, I want to talk about how we can move the literacy agenda forward together.  

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While we have witnessed incredible increases in school enrollment over the last decade, way too many children attending school around the world still leave without the ability to read, write, and do basic math.

As we all know, from ten years of early grade reading assessments around the world, more than 250 million children do not know how to read basic phrases - many after as much as four years of “schooling”.

And the situation is even more alarming for disadvantaged and marginalized groups, such as children with disabilities. UNESCO has estimated that of the 150 million children with disabilities in the developing world, 98 percent do not attend school, and all but 1% of girls with disabilities are illiterate.

As a result, a growing number of young people find they lack the knowledge they need to get a job, earn a living, and thrive.

I am sure that everybody in this room is committed to ensuring that children can progress in their education; and keep their sense of wonder about the world alive; that they can develop the skills they need to get a job, and seize opportunities; and, that they can fully participate in their countries’ decision-making and leadership.

And because literacy is the gateway to knowledge, we must re-commit to each other and to children that we will help them learn to read and write, and learn to do so well.   

Here, I’ll point to Ghana’s success story. Ghana has made rapid and recent progress at all levels by prioritizing education in public expenditures – averaging more than a quarter of government expenditures from 2004 to 2013.

And by focusing spending on those most at risk of educational exclusion, Ghana made a number of improvements. In fact, the Simulations for Equity in Education (SEE) pilot led by UNICEF in Ghana revealed that building kindergartens specifically for poor children in poor districts had a four-fold greater impact on primary completion than reaching the general student population.  

At USAID, we are proud to support Ghana’s Ministry of Education’s Complementary Basic Education (CBE) Program together with the UK Department for International Development (DFID). To date, the program has reached out to school children in over 2,700 rural and hard to reach communities across five regions – from Northern Ghana to Ashanti.

We are also very proud to support another country that has made great strides to improve literacy over the past years: Ethiopia.

Since 2010, when Ethiopia’s first Early Grade Reading Assessments showed poor reading performances across the country, we partnered with the Ministry of Education and regional state education bureaus to improve students’ learning outcomes across the country.

Through the Transforming Education for Adults and Children in the Hinterlands activity – commonly known as TEACH – the percentage of children able to read increased 10 percent – from 59% to 69% – over a two year period. This is real progress. Progress that is transforming children’s education – and transforming children’s lives.

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And as we all work on literacy for hundreds of millions of children, we are also mindful that one in four of the world’s school-aged children and youth live in countries affected by crisis. They account for 30 percent of out-of-school children around the world.

So because the right to education is most at risk during emergencies and crises, the global community has been coming together to address these children’s educational needs.

As part of the new global Education Cannot Wait (ECW) effort, the United States, United Kingdom, European Commission, Netherlands, and Norway have already made commitments to support the 75 million school-aged children and youth who are in desperate need of an education. And their commitments are contributing to reaching a first-year budget of $150 million.

The ECW fund is a breakthrough. It is creating a bridge between emergency assistance and development. It has the potential to deliver safe, free, and quality education to every child affected by crisis by the year 2030. And it is an opportunity to join forces to provide a sense of normalcy to children’s lives, and make it easier for them to achieve their dreams, even as they are subject to the ebbs and flows of violence and displacement.  

A very important component to success in literacy and education for refugees and internally displaced persons is partnerships.

Government officials in the room will tell you that improved learning outcomes cannot result from the efforts of skilled public employees alone. If we want literacy programs to be tailored to local needs and opportunities, it is essential to partner. Only partnerships can leverage the combined skills, assets, technologies, and resources of the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. And only strong partnerships can help us bring our work to scale and secure long-term sustainability.

There are wonderful examples of partnerships all around the world. For instance, today, on behalf of USAID, I am proud to join the World Bank, Norway, and Germany, in announcing our partnership REACH for Reading. It is a Call for Proposals that will support host country NGOs, Ministries of Education, and others to address the obstacles to book provision, and ensure that children have the necessary materials to learn to read.

Four years ago, we also launched the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, in partnership with World Vision and the Australian Government. This initiative is rooted in our belief that science and technology can have transformational effects.

Since we first launched the first round of competitions, we’ve supported more than 40 innovators that have improved children’s lives around the world – by addressing the shortages of Creole reading materials in Haiti; developing new textbooks to support the implementation of Cambodia’s new national reading curriculum; and providing resources in English and Kiswahili to help teachers improve children’s reading abilities in Kenya. And we are seeing the transformative impact of partnerships and technology in innovation after innovation, country after country.

To take one example: through the Enabling Writers software we are empowering individuals, companies, and communities to use an application that allows authors to easily create and share mother tongue books that get children reading.

Just imagine yourselves as young children, going to the library and finding no storybooks in the language you speak at home. Imagine yourselves realizing that the books you find require a much higher reading level than yours. Imagine yourselves unable to practice reading and spark your imagination. Our goal is to ensure that no child finds herself in that situation.   

And I am very pleased that our partners from Pearson are with us today, because we have recently joined forces with them to help ensure children can access books appropriate to their culture, age, and reading ability.

And if you want to connect with innovators and learn how to get quality books and resources into the hands of children who need them, please visit GlobalBookAlliance.org – a new electronic hub where you will find information about how to make sure that children around the world no longer have to share a copy of a tattered textbook in an inscrutable language. Every child has the right to learn. And every child deserves a book.

(Pause)  

Ladies and gentlemen, you know better than me: no one organization or sector alone can solve the world’s most difficult development challenges.

And when almost 40 percent of the world’s primary school age children have not learned the basics in reading and mathematics, we know we have more work to do. 

Literacy changes children’s lives forever, and for the better. Hasn’t it done that in your life? I can’t even imagine how much less productive, happy, inspired I’d be if I couldn’t read. And I probably would have poisoned my family if I cooked dinner at home without reading the recipes.

Each of us has a part to play in ensuring that children around the world have the tools to read the past, and most importantly, write the future.

I know all of you are dedicated to this effort. And I am here to say that USAID will continue to be your partner in this endeavor.

Thank you very much for all that you do and for being here today.