The U.S. and UNESCO Co-organize Teacher Training and Literacy Roundtable

Today, the United States and UNESCO hosted a roundtable discussion at UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters. The event focused on literacy and teacher training for educational practitioners who teach literacy outside of formal school settings. The roundtable, entitled "Teacher Training and Literacy" highlighted the need for a greater supply of trained teachers in regions where an acute shortage is affecting efforts to promote literacy and meet the goals of the Education for All program by 2015.

It was hosted by the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, and Mrs. Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States. Mrs. Bush is the Honorary Ambassador for the UN Literacy Decade. Other participants included teachers from the developing world, representatives from UNESCO delegations and UNESCO secretariat staff.

“Teacher Training and Literacy” served as a bridge between the first ever White House Conference on Global Literacy in September 2006, and the first of five follow-up UNESCO regional literacy conferences, which will be held in Qatar in March. That meeting will be followed by the Africa regional conference in Mali in September. Three other conferences are planned for Latin America, Europe and Central Asia and Asia.