International Literacy Day

Literacy is a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy. Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all, and essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy.

After the Second World War, it became evidently clear that there was the need to accelerate literacy across the globe. A global strategy was therefore needed to approach the problem.
On November 7, 1965, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) birthed the World Literacy Day. In 1966, it was celebrated globally and it has come to stay to this day.

With the objective to bring to the fore, the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and nations, the Human Development Department of the IIS University organized the “Distribution of Teaching Aids” for children of slum area of Jaipur.

All the students of B.Sc and M.Sc Home Science participated enthusiastically in this activity. They prepared many teaching aids such as charts, models, puppets etc especially for different domains of development during early childhood.

On 6th October all the students were taken to the nearby Sanganer slum area of Jaipur. There first they interacted with few villagers and talked about the importance of literacy and then they visited the Aanganwadi centre located in the community- Kalyani I. Teaching aids prepared by students were donated to the Aanganwadi incharge – Mrs. Manju. She was very delighted to receive those aids.

The students expressed the desire to conduct some activity for those children of Aanganwadi centre. With the approval of the centre incharge they conducted the activity of story telling, informal discussion on good habits, rhymes, different shapes and colors etc. Students were getting motivated to see the sparkle in the eyes of those children.

After spending one and half hour in the centre, students were not able to decide that whether they contributed in proving literacy to those children or they added a new experience in their knowledge bank. It can only be said that literacy is not only limited to knowing reading, writing or arithmetic but it also  includes learning through first hand experience.