September Newsletter:

It has been a while since our last Newsletter. During that time, there has been a major heart surgery, an upswing in business and the loss of an Internet Development Technician. These things combined caused a reduction of attention to our Fellowship. We are now back on line and in the process of providing the service our Fellowship can provide to the many Rotary Clubs of Rotary International.

During our brief life span, we have gone from 18 members to 139 members. We have grown from 9 Rotary Districts to 93 Rotary Districts; from 3 Countries and 3 States of the United States of America to 34 Countries and 35 States of the United States of America We also represent 137 Rotary Clubs.

To do the job this Fellowship is capable of doing, we need to increase our membership and to get our members actively involved.

We need to identify the Literacy Projects that are currently in progress and spread the word to the other members so that they can take advantage of the work previously done by others.

Fellowship Web Page

Our Fellowship web page is up and running. Please sign on to: www.literacyproviders.org. If you know of other Literacy web sites of Rotary Clubs that we should have as links on our web site, let us know about them and we’ll provide links to their sites on our page.

Club and District Projects

The purpose of the Fellowship of Literacy Providers is to share ideas, information and techniques for improving literacy. We need to do a better job at this.

PISA - Program for International Student Assessment:

This is a system of international assessments that measures 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy every 3 years. It was first implemented in 2000 and is carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. The results of the PISA-2003 outcomes of Combined Mathematics Literacy are: (From highest to lowest):

OECD Countries:

Finland 544, Korea 542, Netherlands 538, Japan 534, Canada 532, Belgium 529, Switzerland 527, Australia 524, New Zealand 523, Czech Republic 516, Iceland 515, Denmark 514, France 511, Sweden 509, Austria 506, Genmany 503, Slovak Republic 498, Norway 495, Luxembourg 493, Poland 490, Hungary 490, Spain 485, United States 483, Portugal 466, Italy 466, Greece 445, Turkey 423, Mexico 385.

Non-OECD Countries:

Hong Kong-China 550, Liechtenstein 536, Macao-China 527, Latvia 483, Russian Federation 468, Serbia and Montenegro 437, Uruguay 422, Thailand 417, Indonesia 360, Tunisia 359.

The average OECD score was 500.

During this assessment, Problem Solving was also measured. The top 3 OECD countries, in order, were:

Korea 550, Finland 548 and Japan 547. The last 3 remained the same as with mathematics.

The top 3 Non-OECD countries, in order, were:

Hong Kong-China 548, Macao-China 532 and Liechtenstein 529. The last 3 were Uruguay 411, Indonesia 361 and Tunisia 345.

Concentrated Language Encounter (CLE) Programs

There are currently 13 countries reported as having active CLE programs. They are:

Bangladesh           Namibia
South Africa         Vanuatu
Brazil                    Philippines
Turkey                  Nepal
Argentina              India
Kenya                  Pakistan
Nigeria

CLE is a Rotary Lighthouse Literacy project for alleviating mass illiteracy.

We believe that an additional program is in the process of being established in Peru and have had a request for information about the possibility of establishing one in Mexico.

Functional Illiteracy Defined:

A person, who is unable to read, write, and communicate in his native language and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society.

What is Literacy in other Languages?

Capacidad De Leer Y Escribir
Litteraire
Bildung
Alfabetismo
Alfabetisme
Aptidao Literaria
Pamothoctb
Literacy
Shikiji
Instruccion