50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LITERACY CAMPAIGN
As the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003 - 2012) is about to come to an end, the number of people in the world who are still illiterate is alarming: 64.7 million children have received no formal schooling and 793 million adults remain illiterate.
Cuba undertook a year-long national literacy campaign which was completed on December 22, 1961 with Cuba being proclaimed a territory free of illiteracy.
The campaign's organizational structures were put in place starting January 1961. In order to teach the country’s 1.045 million illiterates to read and write, volunteer teachers' brigades were organized: the Conrado Benítez, Frank País and Patria o Muerte Brigades, which included schoolteachers and both young and adult volunteers.
Those who were already professional teachers were in charge of training the volunteers – most of them teenagers and more than half of them young women – and of preparing and drafting the instructional booklets to be used.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/22dic-ANNIVERSARY.html
