International Literacy Day 2008
Posted by supro on September 8, 2008
International Literacy Day 2008
Education is the key to Poverty
SUPRO observed International Literacy Day at 35 districts and national level through organizing human chain, rally, discussion and cultural program on 8 September 2008. In addition to that some districts submitted memorandum to government through District Commissioner. The national level program held in front of National Museum, Shahbag, Dhaka through organizing 
human chain with its fellow organizations. Education activists, CSOs, NGOs representative, grassroots people took part in the human chain. SUPRO also organized a cultural event for mass gathering.
To observe the day SUPRO came out with its own slogan “Education is the key to poverty.” For the last couple of years, literacy program was not in priority list of government planning, despite having declaration in MDGs to achieve 100% literacy within 2015. According to government statistics, 46.32 % population is still illiterate, which indicates that long way to go by 2015 as there is no clear policy frame to address the issue of 100% literacy. But there are many projects to enhance literacy rate supported by external loans with strong conditionalities, eventually which enhance poverty, inequality and inaccessibility of essential services to the poor and marginalized people. These projects are not adequate according to requirement of mass people. For this reason, civil society of Bangladesh demanded to government to take initiative to declare literacy and education as fundamental rights guaranteed by constitution.
Through the rally and discussion SUPRO placed the following demands:
1. Education must be considered as fundamental rights in Bangladesh’s constitution
2. Formulate specific action plan and allocate budget accordingly in order to ensure 100% literacy for all
3. Teacher student ratio must be increased for qualitative education. This must be made at 1:40 from existing 1:60.
4. All sort of irregularities, corruption and ill management must be removed to increase literacy and retaining education for new-literate under the projects of non-formal education
5. Introduce mid-day meal in primary education to reduce drop-out rate
6. Role of local government must be increased in primary and mass education
7. Irregularities must be removed in the stipend program of primary education.
