Dubai: Social networking site Twitter and international charity Room to Read have come together for a unique campaign to mark International Literacy Day today.

Illiteracy has plagued millions worldwide for decades now.

As reported by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (Unesco) website: "One in five adults is still not literate and 67.4 million children do not attend school."

Awareness

In order to combat this, Unesco dedicated a day to spreading awareness about this problem in 1965. Today, it is known as International Literacy Day and is observed worldwide on September 8.

Room to Read is a US-registered non-profit organisation that aims to educate millions of children worldwide. According to its website, it has established over 10,000 libraries, published nearly 500 original local language children's books, and distributed 7.4 million books in the developing world since it was founded in 2000. On International Literacy Day 2010, they are taking the term "to spread awareness" to a whole new level.

Decode

Room to Read has partnered with Twitter to create a "literacy-awareness tweet". The tweet symbolises how every sentence looks to the more than 776 million people worldwide who cannot read or write. Tweeters will have to decode this "indecipherable tweet" and send their response to the Twitter-operated website www.hope140.org.

"With the International Literacy Day campaign, we are asking the average Twitter user to experience, just for a minute, the disempowerment that one in five people in this world experience due to illiteracy," John Wood, Room to Read Founder and Board Chair, said in a media release. Both Twitter and Room to Read are driven by the desire to have a positive impact on the world," Biz Stone (@biz), co-founder of Twitter, added.

To participate: log on to www.twitter.com/roomtoread today.

Mohammad's post: Break poverty cycle

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Tuesday urged women to educate themselves and read to break the cycle of poverty.

On his Facebook page, Shaikh Mohammad posted: "Around 796 million adults are illiterate; two-thirds of them are women. International Literacy Day is a reminder to continue to recognise the transformation that literacy can bring to women's lives and its role in breaking the cycle of poverty."

— Alia Al Theeb, Deputy UAE Editor