25 - 29 January 2009
Paris, France

The ERP partnership contributed to review the 2008-2012 United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) Strategic Framework for Action (SFA). Special focusing on rural people's education and training needs and opportunities was advocated. Functional literacy, matched to agricultural extension and basic skill training for agriculture and rural development, including training of trainers, are indeed capacity development efforts, key to achieving the MDGs, given the direct relation between literacy, productivity, income and Food Security.

The UNLD Strategic Framework for Action (SFA) focus on functional agricultural literacy for the rural poor is important given that about 776 million adults - or 16 percent of the world's adult population - lack basic literacy skills, that about two-thirds of them are women and that about 80 percent of the out-of-school children, which will add in the future to the number of the world adult illiterates, are rural people.

The ERP partnership contributed to review the 2008-2012 United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) Strategic Framework for Action (SFA). Special focusing on rural people's education and training needs and opportunities was advocated. Functional literacy, matched to agricultural extension and basic skill training for agriculture and rural development, including training of trainers, are indeed capacity development efforts, key to achieving the MDGs, given the direct relation between literacy, productivity, income and Food Security.

The UNLD Strategic Framework for Action (SFA) focus on functional agricultural literacy for the rural poor is important given that about 776 million adults - or 16 percent of the world's adult population - lack basic literacy skills, that about two-thirds of them are women and that about 80 percent of the out-of-school children, which will add in the future to the number of the world adult illiterates, are rural people.