While the great leaders of the world are using their power to threaten each other and gloat about who has a bigger “red button”, there are actual problems being ignored. Illiteracy being a major one. Today’s children are tomorrow’s future. With the recent conflicts and refugee crisis, the situation for the above said future, does not look good. A United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) report has revealed that at least 59 million young people are being forced into illiteracy as a result of violent conflicts and disasters in disaster-affected countries. The UN agency said nearly three in 10 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 living in conflict or in disaster-affected countries are illiterate. We are basically pushing our young children towards illiteracy and unemployment.
The situation is particularly dire for girls and young women in that age group, with 33 per cent of them in emergency countries failing to learn even the basics, compared to 24 per cent of boys.
For those of us living in a well developed society, we understand that women play as much of an equal role, if not better, in the development of a nation and the world as a whole. There are so many successful women in all fields who have excelled at what they do or have been leaders and agents of change.
We can change the situation, donate, volunteer, sponsor a child’s education or each one, teach one. Find the best way you can help.
What use is all the power or money in the world if we are not moving forward. Are we leaving the world better than we found it? Or have we become a part of the constant destruction that humans are causing? Think. Act.
- The reader is a student of sociology, based in the US
