To mark International Literacy Day on 8 September, IFAD joins with other agencies and organizations to call attention to the fact that despite tremendous gains in literacy in recent years, much remains to be done to ensure that people around the world, especially the poor, have access to basic education.

There are huge gaps between the literacy levels and educational access of men and women. These gaps are greater in rural areas, and even greater for the rural poor.

More than 880 million adults, two thirds of them women, are illiterate.
Out of more than 110 million children who are deprived of basic education, two thirds are girls.

Experience has shown that investment in girls' education and the ensuing empowerment of women converts directly into better nutrition, health and economic performance for their families and their communities.

IFAD's agricultural and development projects often have a component that focuses on training and education. Education is fundamental to poverty reduction for rural people as it dramatically improves their work and income-earning prospects.

While new technologies alone are rewarding, education can speed their adoption, often bringing large productivity and income gains to small farmers and farm workers. Education can impart good farming practices and ease access to new information. It also opens up other information channels through health professionals and extension agents. By improving the ability to process new information, education can effectively fuel innovation.

In Syria, large numbers of men go to work in the oil-rich Gulf states, leaving women at home to provide for the entire household. As part of a wider agricultural development project, IFAD promoted training courses for Syrian women in crop and fruit-tree cultivation, health and nutrition, literacy and other topics. Sensitive to local taboos preventing men and women from working together, IFAD used women extension workers in the training courses.

Discrimination in education often marks the start of the vicious spiral of poverty. A girl may be deprived of schooling and literacy solely because she is female. Seventy per cent of poor women in India cannot read or write. Illiteracy excludes people from written knowledge and often from decision-making. A number of IFAD projects in India promote literacy for women. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Government, long-standing attitudes to education, particularly for girls, are gradually changing.

An IFAD project in Honduras is encouraging rural farmers to follow lessons at home. Fostered by the Government, Teachers at Home is a radio programme designed for both parents and children for use outside the schoolroom. The quality and level of the lessons are similar to those taught at school. At the end of the year, those learning at home join with traditional school students to sit exams.

On 8 September, International Literacy Day serves as a potent reminder that literacy and access to education are powerful tools to both economic and political empowerment.