Rotary promotes literacy

“If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children’s mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative and involved lives.”

– Danny Glover

Worldwide, 67 million children have no access to education, and over 775 million people over 15 are illiterate. I am glad that our members support educational projects. Our goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity and increase adult literacy.

Education for girls

If you want to empower societies, reduce poverty, improve basic hygiene and healthcare and fight high infant and maternal mortality rates, the answer is to educate girls. The old adage holds good: if you educate a man, you educate only one individual, but if you educate a woman, the entire family gets educated.

RILM: TEACH

Rotary in India through the Rotary India Literacy Mission has embarked upon a mission to achieve total literacy and quality education through T-E-A-C-H: T – Teacher support; E – E-learning; A – Adult literacy; C – Child development; H – Happy school

These programmes are inter-linked in objective and content, resulting in improved learning outcome.

Asha Kiran

Let each Rotarian pledge to send out-of-school children back to schools under the Asha Kiran programme through which children who have never been enrolled in school, dropped out or were irregular to school, or have lagged behind, are mainstreamed/regularised ensuring their retention in schools after the required brushing up. This will help them access mainstream state-funded schools. Sending a child back to school costs ₹2,500 for a year.

E-learning – NCERT

The pandemic has challenged the way children study and learn. Rotary in India quickly recognised this and is now on the path to creating history. This month RILM, partnering with NCERT, will launch the biggest e-learning programme which will be beamed over 12 television channels, benefitting over 15 crore children and enabling them to pursue their education from their homes. This e-learning programme is powered by RILM.

Remember what Malala Yousafzai said, “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

Kamal Sanghvi,
RI Director, 2019-21