Importance of Education

My dear Rotarians,

Kofi Anan says, “Literacy is the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realise his or her full potential.”

Worldwide, 67 million children have no access to education, and over 775 million people, over 15 years, are illiterate. Rotary understands this and our members support educational projects that provide technology, teacher training, vocational training, student meal programmes and low-cost textbooks to communities. Our goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity in education and increase adult literacy.

Educate the girl child: If you really want to empower societies, reduce poverty, improve basic hygiene and healthcare, address population explosion, and fight high rates of infant and maternal mortality, the answer is to educate girls. The old adage holds good: If you educate a man, you educate a person; if you educate a woman, the entire family gets educated.

RILM-TEACH: Rotary in India, through the Rotary India Literacy Mission, has embarked upon one of the most comprehensive programmes on Total Literacy and Quality Education. This mission wishes to achieve the literacy goals through its comprehensive programme called T-E-A-C-H:
T–Teacher Support; E–E-learning; A–Adult Literacy; C–Child Development; and H–Happy School;
Each of these programmes with specific focus is interlinked with the others in objective and content, accompanied with improvement in learning outcome of primary education and spread of adult literacy.

Asha Kiran: This September, let each Rotarian pledge to send back out-of-school children to schools under the Asha Kiran programme. Under this programme, children from vulnerable communities, who have never been to school, dropped out from school, been irregular in attending school, or have lagged behind, are mainstreamed/regularised ensuring their retention in schools after the required orientation. The objective is to facilitate these children’s access to mainstream State-funded primary/elementary schools. Sending a child back to school costs ₹2,500 a year.

Remember one child, one teacher, one book, one pen… can change the world.

Kamal Sanghvi
RI Director, 2019-21