INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY
Every year on September 8, since 1966, International Literacy Day has been celebrated around the world. It was established at the 14th session of the UNESCO General Conference on the recommendation of the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Elimination of Illiteracy, held in Tehran in 1965. The date of the celebration on September 8 is the day of the grand opening of this conference. The main goal of the International Literacy Day is to intensify the efforts of the international community to spread literacy, one of the main areas of UNESCO's activities. Literacy is a certain degree of a person's proficiency in reading and writing skills in accordance with the grammatical norms of their native language.
Every year, the International Literacy Day is dedicated to a specific topic. Over the years, it was held under the mottos: "The importance of literacy for women", "Literacy and health", "Literacy in the digital world", "Literacy and multilingualism", etc. On this Day, International Literacy Awards are also awarded to people with outstanding ideas who can contribute to the The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by world leaders in 2015, include goals to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Goal 4 (on the SDGs) contains a component on the need to ensure that young people and a significant proportion of the adult population, both men and women, can read, write of literacy in order to implement the education agenda for the period up to 2030.
In 2016, celebrations were held in many countries under the motto "Reading the past, writing the future" on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of this international day.
Guncha HAMEDOVA,
the Vth year student of Faculty of International Journalism of the
Institute of International Relations of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan.