[Reading-hall-of-fame] Literacy Frees the World Tour press release

[Thomas Sticht]

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

PRESS RELEASE 							October 22, 2004

UNESCO Laureate Completes Literacy Tour

El Cajon, CA: Illiteracy afflicts almost a billion adults around the
world, and tens of millions more in industrialized nations are struggling
with the new demands for literacy in the information age. This is one of
the messages Tom Sticht, UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Medal laureate in 2003 too=
k
to some 3,000 adult literacy teachers, students, business leaders and
others in a first of its kind tour of thirteen cities in Canada, the
United Kingdom, and the United States.

Conducted from May through October this year, Sticht=92s tour celebrated =
the
work that adult literacy teachers are doing around the world. The tour=92=
s
name, Literacy Frees the World, was based on the United Nations Literacy
Decade=92s (2003-2012) theme Literacy as Freedom. Focusing on President
Franklin D. Roosevelt=92s famous Four Freedoms speech to the U.S. Congres=
s
in 1941, Sticht illustrated how adult literacy teachers around the world
have helped hundreds of millions of illiterate adults become literate and
achieve Roosevelt=92s Freedom of Voice and Expression, Freedom of Worship=
,
Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.

Looking toward the future, Sticht advised tour participants that their
jobs will become more critical due to increased demands for adult literac=
y
development caused by the globalization of economies, immigration, and th=
e
mixing of cultures.  In addition, world-wide research is revealing the
important role that adult literacy development plays in the education of
children. More and more, world educators are beginning to recognize that
the right of children to education includes the right to educated parents.
For this reason, national policies of education should place the same
importance on the education of adults as they do on the education of
children.

						# # #

Contact: Dr. Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht@aznet.net

A tour report- Literacy Frees the World: A Vision of the Future Through a
Prism of the Past -is now available in PDF or html formats for free
downloading at

http://www.nald.ca/WHATNEW/hdlnenws.htm