What can we do to Solve World's problems? - Part I

The last few months I've been wondering on what we could do to solve some of the problems. I know there are a lot of problems, but still I couldn't figure out how best I can be to the society. While collecting information, I found how simplest of things for us can make difference to people around the world.

Consider:
While we have had 17-20 years of education in reputed institutions, there are 400 million people in India alone, who cannot even read/write in their own language. If we with so much of education, find it harder to face the challenges of the today's world, what is the fate of the person who cannot read/write even a single language. If we could just help a person to read/write we could change enormous things in life. He could then read newspapers and know things around him; He might not blindly sign documents made by unscrupulous money lenders; He could get a sense of educating his child, thereby permanently breaking the vicious cycle of illiteracy; He could read about issues about family planning, safe water.... endless oppurtunities for him and his entire family. The simple thing of teaching a person to read/write can be PRICELESS. And its not Rocket Science, but still we are not ashamed in not taking the forward step to bring atleast one person from illiteracy to litercy.

Here are a few things suggested by Rotary International:

• Apply for a Rotary Foundation grant to establish literacy programs for girls and women, working with an international partner in a country with high rates of female illiteracy.
• Establish a literacy center with a library where people can come to read and meet tutors.
• Sponsor a business breakfast, inviting business executives and managers of local businesses to hear about literacy efforts in the workplace.
• Offer to set up satellite schools in villages, if girls are forbidden to travel far from home, and to sponsor single-sex schools with female teachers, if coeducational learning is a cultural issue.
• Organize a public awareness campaign encouraging parents to read to their children.
• Donate books to students and class libraries at home and abroad.
• Schedule a reading hour at a local library when club members would read to children.
• Provide child care for parents attending literacy classes.
• Reward students who read the most books, win a spelling bee or book report contest, or tutor others.


More Issues to come .....