April 22 was the day of “The Big Read,” the global action coordinated by GCE, the Global Campaign for Education. E-Net Philippines organized the national event in Quezon City, while other E-Net members and partners took care of activities in other areas. Thea Soriano, E-Net national coordinator, sent the following report:

Maraming salamat sa lahat ng inyong suporta sa Global Action Week 2009!  

Compared to last year, we were able to mobilize more advocates this year. More than 6,000 participated (last year we were 4,500) in several activities that campaigned for Youth and Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning. 

Many thanks to the following:

1.

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Edinburgh was the venue of a recent conference I attended in preparation for Confintea VI, the international conference on adult education convened by UNESCO every 12 years.

What was unique about his conference was its emphasis on the adult learners themselves. Majority of the participants were not learning providers, policy makers or researchers, but representatives of adult learners’ associations.

It’s been a long time coming.

Even at the last Confintea V in 1997, there was already talk of giving space and hearing to the voice of learners.

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ELF was present at Confintea V (Hamburg Germany, 1997), which declared that adult learning is 1) a right, 2) a tool, 3) a joy, and 4) a shared responsibility.

I don’t think that Confintea VI (Belem Brazil, 2009) needs to add further to this list of roles and reasons for adult learning. The spirit that should prevail is captured by the slogan “From rhetoric to action.”

Perhaps it may need to re-emphasize the continuity “from literacy to lifelong learning.” Up to now, many governments limit their interpretation of adult learning to basic literacy, and this is understandable since over 770 million adults are classified as illiterate.

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