Keynote speech by H.R.H. Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands at the Unesco conference

Speech | 01-12-2009

Dear Madame Governor, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here in such distinguished company for the first time since my appointment as Unesco's Special Envoy on Literacy for Development. I would like to thank the Member States and UNESCO's Secretariat for organising this conference, the Government of Brazil for taking the initiative to bring us here and the State of Pará and the city of Belém for your tremendous hospitality. Right here, next to the world's greatest natural resource, I cannot imagine a more inspiring setting to discuss a matter that concerns human resources. Our presence here symbolises how both natural and human resources are inextricably linked!

Over the next few days, we will exchange insights and define action. May the commitments we express here lead to an ambitious and clear Belém Framework of Action by the time we leave. This conference is only one step of the way. Our tangible success will be defined by putting into practice what we already know and will agree in order to scale up the impact of our actions. A lot has been done, but I remain concerned about the huge gap to be bridged to reach our shared Education for All goal of reducing the number of illiterate people by 50% by 2015. It is more urgent than ever before that literacy for children, young people and adults is moved up the list of national priorities. When it comes to adult literacy, we have sharpened the agenda through the International Strategic Framework for Action. This should guide us through the second half of the UN Literacy Decade.

The question then is: How do we achieve real progress? I'd like to lay out a few thoughts on this.

• By positioning learning and literacy as relevant to pretty much all challenges we face globally, regionally, nationally and locally: protecting the environment and health, alleviating poverty, ensuring financial stability, managing migration flows and living in peace.
• Secondly, by approaching learning and literacy within the wider context of the literacy chain. All areas of learning are inextricably linked: from early childhood development to reading and writing for young people to adult learning and literate environments.

So, by making learning and literacy everyone's business, we will increase our chance of multiplying our impact.

About relevance

For the great Paulo Freire, literacy was about participating more critically in society. Society is framed by the way we deal with our challenges and informed citizens are crucial for addressing them. How indeed can we achieve our ambitions on for instance competitiveness, healthy living, sustainability, social inclusion and active citizenship when large proportions of the population lack the necessary skills? Take today, it's World Aids Day. A prime area where education and thus literacy is essential. Next year, the UN Year of Biodiversity. It gives us a great opportunity to draw attention on the importance of literacy. This makes education of both children and adults imperative. But there's no meaningful learning without literacy. It is a means to an end. Investing in literacy is investing in someone's feeling of self-confidence and sense of self-worth. This may be a given for you and me. But adults who were formerly illiterate have taught me that literacy is about every aspect of their life's: about overcoming their shame and gaining self-esteem, about finding and maintaining a job, being productive, raising children, living healthily and yes, often about simply being happy. It is about having a chance to a future without boundaries. It is about freedom and equality.What does this mean for your work in adult learning? Decision-makers and influencers in all these areas - from health and development to environment and financial management -need to understand the relevance of learning and literacy to their work. The same goes for civil society organizations and companies. They need to fully appreciate that by investing in literacy, there's a greater chance of success in their respective areas of work. We need to convince them on the basis of clear evidence. Does this hold true for all regions of the world you may wonder? Yes indeed. Interestingly, the issue of relevance is mentioned by representatives from Africa, Asia and Latin-America alike. And this has also been our experience in Europe. As the 16th century Dutch philosopher Erasmus puts it: literacy is a mindset .

Then about the literacy chain

Although our focus during these days is on enhancing adult learning and reducing levels of illiteracy, I very much hope that we keep in mind that adult learning is inextricably linked with preventing children from becoming illiterate. A child raised by literate parents has a higher chance of personal development, success and of becoming an active citizen. This is what we want. Put differently: if you want to educate a village, educate the mothers. The notion of the literacy chain also goes beyond the formal educational field. Because a learner is also an employee, a voter and a consumer. The everyday environment provides unlimited learning opportunities. So we need it all: and early childhood development and universal primary education and secondary and vocational education and adult learning and creating literate environments.

To make this a reality, we need to work together and not be tempted to compete for attention and funding among different parts of the literacy chain. What we do in one area is likely to strengthen the success in another. Taking the literacy chain as our starting point, we should also accept that our work is never-ending.

So how do we put the notions of relevance and the literacy chain into practice? We need to scale up our impact by creating a snowball effect. A lot has been achieved through individual and collective efforts.We have most of the insights about what works and what doesn't work in adult learning and literacy programmes. You and many other dedicated experts across the world work tirelessly on these themes every day and I commend you for your tremendous efforts. We can only scale up our impact by reaching out to players outside the traditional educational field and involve them in the learning challenges. We need to find new partners and create a sense of co-ownership. In this context, I´d like to share the concept of the marketplace with you. It takes a network a step further. Networks generally are about sharing knowledge and best practices among a group of likeminded players. In a marketplace, likeminded players also preach to the non-converted to create a demand that wasn't there before. That's where the impact is scaled up - by bringing together supply and demand. The likeminded players provide the supply side, namely the vast array of knowledge, educational methods, campaigns, research and experts that exist. And by showing the relevance of learning and literacy, we create demand among non-traditional players in the private and public sectors. For instance, if a company is unaware that a percentage of its employees has literacy problems, it is unlikely to invest in training them. The task therefore is to raise awareness, give evidence that their workforce will be more productive and provide support to go do it.In conclusion, every one of you, working in different countries and regions, no doubt faces different challenges. But learning affects us all across the world. I very much hope that our shared efforts over the coming days will strengthen our commitment, scale up impact and harness new resources for learning and literacy. We need to celebrate successes, but more importantly build on them and replicate them elsewhere.

I look forward to working with you to help make learning and literacy everyone´s business. The vision I have layed out may be common sense for some and daring for others. In any case we must be ambitious. What's more, we are all in a prime position to connect the dots, seize opportunities and maximise the potential of our efforts. We have to seize opportunities and size up. And when doing so, let us never forget to think about what it means for someone's life and thus to the world we live in and sustainable future.

Thank you.