WHAT IS THE ALPHABETICUS PROJECT?
The Alphabeticus Project is a world-class, children’s entertainment project. It has a foundation based on helping people overcome illiteracy and features:
- The Way To Alphabeticus, a children’s adventure feature film and TV Series based around the rescue of the letters of the alphabet.
- A literacy game called Alphabeticus SPELL.
- A series of Apps based on spelling and letter ordering games.
‘The effects of illiteracy are very similar in developing and developed countries. This includes illiterate people trapped in a cycle of poverty with limited opportunities for employment or income generation and higher chances of poor health, turning to crime and dependence on social welfare or charity (if available).’ http://www.worldliteracyfoundation.org/The_Economic_&_Social_Cost_of_Illiteracy.pdf
WHAT’S THE STATE OF AUSTRALIAN LITERACY?
Forty-seven per cent of the Australian population (that’s approximately 10.8 million) are functionally illiterate. That means they can’t read the instructions on a medicine bottle, they can’t read a map, they can’t read a recipe.http://www.abc.net.au/local/videos/2012/09/07/3585457.htm
About 4.5 million working-age adults Australians do not have the necessary higher reading and numeracy skills to succeed in work or study
UNESCO STATISTICS ON LITERACY
Today, nearly 17% of the world’s adult population is still not literate; two thirds of them women, making gender equality even harder to achieve. The scale of illiteracy among youth also represents an enormous challenge; an estimated 122 million youth globally are illiterate, of which young women represent 60.7%. The 67.4 million children who are out of school are likely to encounter great difficulties in the future, as deficient or non-existent basic education is the root cause of illiteracy. With some 775 million adults lacking minimum literacy skills, literacy for all thus remains elusive. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/education-building-blocks/literacy/resources/statistics/
It is estimated that over 1 billion people are currently learning English worldwide. According to the British Council, as of the year 2010, worldwide there were 750 million ‘English as a Foreign Language’ speakers. In addition, there were 375 million ‘English as a Second Language speakers’.