International Literacy Day
As some of you might know, many countries around the world celebrated the International Literacy Day last thursday (I dont blame you for telling me that you either forgot about it heard its name right now for the first time in your life - regarding the abanduncy of international days, decades and weeks dedicated to more or less important issues like literacy, HIV Aids or mother tounges, one might easily get confused).
The literacy day was introduced by UNESCO back in 1966, and has since been celebrated in order to think about the iliterate people whose number still remains high at an estimated 860 Million worldwide. In Somalia, the day was celebrated during the regime of former dictator Siad Barre but has since been forgotten due to the civil war and the chaos which broke out in Somalia afterwards.
This year, however, different international NGO's operating in Somaliland decided to join in again. The day followed two weeks of hard work undertaken to a big extent by Ahmed from the african education trust and myself. As i had to discover one more time, preperations here are done in a completly different way than i am used to. Two days ahead of the celebrations the venue was still not booked, the main speakers were not yet invited and invitations were still waiting in the office for being distributed to different people and organisations.
Despite these major delayes things worked out quite well, people seemed to have fun, and the organisations involved in the day were happy, too (after all it is a well done publicity for their work). There are only two questions still nagging my mind: How effective is such a day and to which extend did we succeed in spreading the message about the importance of literacy across the audience and beyond?
Below a short summary of the happenings:
The literacy day was introduced by UNESCO back in 1966, and has since been celebrated in order to think about the iliterate people whose number still remains high at an estimated 860 Million worldwide. In Somalia, the day was celebrated during the regime of former dictator Siad Barre but has since been forgotten due to the civil war and the chaos which broke out in Somalia afterwards.
This year, however, different international NGO's operating in Somaliland decided to join in again. The day followed two weeks of hard work undertaken to a big extent by Ahmed from the african education trust and myself. As i had to discover one more time, preperations here are done in a completly different way than i am used to. Two days ahead of the celebrations the venue was still not booked, the main speakers were not yet invited and invitations were still waiting in the office for being distributed to different people and organisations.
Despite these major delayes things worked out quite well, people seemed to have fun, and the organisations involved in the day were happy, too (after all it is a well done publicity for their work). There are only two questions still nagging my mind: How effective is such a day and to which extend did we succeed in spreading the message about the importance of literacy across the audience and beyond?
Below a short summary of the happenings:
eight o'clock we met in front of the minstry of education - ready to start marching for a more literate world...
Here we go! girls and boys, women and men, literates and illiterates are walking together to the rhythm of the local police band.
The march was followed by a official ceremony. And to make it not just official, but rather very official, the minister of education addressed some thoughts to the audience. In my eyes we had to many speeches and too less activities. However, since there is not much going on in Hargeisa anyway, people appreciate every single speech, show, or entertainment, no matter how boring it is.
But things didnt end there: Against the slow moving morning program we provided a rather exciting afternoon program: circus, Drama and Distribution of certificates and earned a lot of sympathies for it.
Not only from human beings, but also from the goats which one can find everywere in this town!
And if you want to find out more about the day, dont dare writing me an email - I am currently preparing a summery of the happenings for CARE which I can post you!
posted by Johanna und Mia at 4:58 AM
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