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I-READ PROJECT aims to develop and boost basic literacy skills of adults, targeting low educated women

Literacy is fundamental to human development as it enables people to live full lives and contribute to their communities and societies. The basic literacy skills landscape of EU citizen and not only is very gloomy now a days, although in some countries the official data about this issues are missing, there are a lot of signals that the situation is critical.Literacy is also an essential prerequisite for all kinds of learning. In the knowledge-based societies of the 21st century, with the rapid spread of new technologies and a constantly changing work environment, education is no longer limited to childhood and adolescence but instead should be conceptualized as lifelong and life-wide.In Europe, one in five 16-65 year-olds have poor reading skills and it is estimated that around 55 million adults between 15 and 65 years of age have literacy difficulties (World Literacy Foundation, 2015).European males have a slightly higher literacy level compared to European females (OECD, PIAAC). According to PIAAC data, among EU countries, Austria registers the highest gender gap with respect to literacy difficulties.

In Romania, according to the latest official census data (2011), 1.4% from total population have no education/no basic literacy skills (read and write), while the percentage of illiterates by gender indicates that the problem is more critical among women: 1% men and 1.7% women. The number of illiterate women (around 160.000) is twice the number of illiterate men in Romania (80.000). By ethnicity, 1% of Romanians, 14.1% of Roma, 11.1% of Turkish have no basic literacy skills.

Data broken down by gender and ethnicity show that women from ethnic minority groups register the highest rate of illiteracy. Thus, 0.6% of Romanian men, 1.4% of Romanian women; 11.3% of Roma men and 17% of Roma women; 8% of Turkish men and 14.8% of Turkish women have no basic literacy skills.

Also, other European countries face significant rates of illiteracy among adults such as Turkey (4.4%) and Spain (1.7%) (UNDP). According to UNESCO data, in 2016, Turkey registered almost 2 million illiterate women and around 350.000 illiterate men. In Spain the number of illiterate women is around 460.000, while the number of illiterate men is 220.000.

People with literacy difficulties feel ashamed about their shortcomings, hide it, believe they are too old to learn, and either consider improvement impossible or are afraid of failing (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2011). People with literacy difficulties are more likely to suffer from unemployment, poor health and poverty. Literacy difficulties cost the the EU economy over 350 billion euros each year (World Literacy Foundation, 2015)

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

1. Improving social integration and life chances of women with no basic literacy skills;

2. Developing and transferring an innovative tool for basic literacy skills to organizations and NGOs that support skills development among low educated women;

3. Supporting the activity of NGOs for women that are active at local level, rural areas and among disadvantaged groups.

TARGET GROUP

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ILLITERATE WOMEN from disadvantaged groups such as Roma, migrants
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MENTORS who will support illiterate women to achieve basic literacy
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EXPERTS in adult education, IT application for learning/training, mentoring

i-Read project will develop 2 INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS:

1. Learnable Reading Tool - LRT an innovative approach for teaching reading skills, for those who will learn "basic literacy" via smart phones, only watching and listening avatars and learning alphabet and 25-50 basic phrases for daily life.
2. Handbook for mentors, for those who will assist literacy learners (who may be family members, friends) and who can read/write; and are willing to help the learner.

THE EXPECTED IMPACT OF i-READ PROJECT

Impact on the participants

  1. Illiterate women from Roma or migrants communities "i-Read women learner" The direct impact is basic literacy achieving - at the end of project, "i-Read women learner" participants in the project will know the alphabet and a minimum of 25 - 50 simple sentences Spillover effects: the participants will also become familiar with Mobile phone use and IT application for learning; overcoming the learning objective of the project through more individual practice stimulated by the results obtained. Unintended impact: changing mentalities regarding: the role and position of women in community and society, improving self-esteem that helps social integration; increasing the level of participation of children, especially girls, in education (eg. Roma communities or other minorities); reducing and mediating conflicts and inter-generational differences (mother-daughter relationship).
  2. Possible mentors i-Read women mentor" The direct impact consists in developing and extending the competences as mentor Spillover effects: stimulating the initiative to continue to develop the acquired competencies; community involvement, voluntary work.
  3. Experts in adult education, basic literacy, IT learning tools, mentoring, The direct impact consists in: knowledge enrichment and taking over the project results and implemented in their work Spillover effects: project promoting, raising the visibility of the project and results within the experts networks

Impact on the participant organizations

Organizations or members of partnership will be impacted, as follows: - improving specific competencies in the project area - enlarging the portfolio of services, - expanding addressability to new customer categories - developing new learning / training methods - generating new project ideas that respond to specific needs.

Impact on the target group

Target groups in general: "i-READ women learner" and "i-READ women mentor". The direct impact is reducing the number of illiterate women in communities at risk of marginalization, with specific cultural patterns.

Spillover effects for "i-READ women learner": the good example of results achieved by participants (basic literacy and learning to use a Mobile phone/ modern communication technology) leads to a continuously raising of number of literacy women in the closed communities. This is an impact on the long term.

Spillover effects for "i-READ women mentor": increasing the number of mentors for the literacy of women using LRT.

Unintended impact: changing mentalities regarding: the role and position in community and society, self-esteem that helps social integration; increasing the level of participation of children, especially girls, in education (eg. Roma communities or other minorities); reducing and mediating conflicts and inter-generational differences (mother-daughter relationship).

Impact on other relevant stakeholders

National and European organizations in the field of education, adult education, social protection, migrants’ integration, labour integration will be impacted by increasing their capacity for development of active measures and evidence-based policies.

Impact at local and national level

Generally speaking, the project impact at local and national level will be the same as above mentioned, targeting the most relevant groups for each partner country (eg. for Romania and Turkey minority ethnic groups, for Austria and Spain- migrants).

Impact at regional and european/international level

The final results of project may impact EU if will be sufficiently well-promoted and solutions and resources for their transfer at the level of national and EU decision-makers, in order to be included in new active measures and policies for social integration of illiterate people will be find.