More than 775 million people over the age of fifteen are illiterate.  That is 17% of the world’s adult population.  Rotary’s goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, to reduce gender disparity in education, and to increase adult literacy.  

Rotary members in Afghanistan have opened a girls’ school to break the cycle of poverty and social imbalance. In the United States, Rotary has partnered with ProLiteracy Detroit to recruit and train tutors after a study showed that more than half of the local adult population was functionally illiterate.

Rotary has collaborated with the SOUNS program in South Africa, Puerto Rico and the United States.   It teaches educators how to improve literacy by teaching children to recognize letters by sounds instead of names.

And Rotarians are providing clean, fresh water to every public school in Lebanon so students can be healthier and get a better education.

Your financial support of the Rotary Foundation enables this to happen.  Giving to the Foundation is much easier – just go to rotary.org/donate, 

Thank you.