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Illiteracy and functional illiteracy
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Illiteracy in our modern society

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Matthieu van den Beld, Figou Stam, Jin Xian Souw

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 PWS | Matthieu van den Beld, Figou Stam, Jin Xian Souw

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................ 3

Facts and figures low literacy ..................................................................................................... 5

Causes of low literacy ................................................................................................................. 6

The history of illiteracy in the Netherlands ................................................................................ 8

What are the daily difficulties and/or problems illiterates come across? ............................... 11

Correlation between literacy and social position .................................................................... 14

Are there any solutions to solve this problem? ....................................................................... 16

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 19

Sources ..................................................................................................................................... 21

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Introduction

The more our world becomes modern, the harder the lives of illiterate people get.
Everywhere around us are words, adds, papers to fill in, brochures. Everything we do is
connected to reading or writing. It has become part of human nature. But what if you can’t
read? If you can’t write? A lot of everyday activities become hard to do or even impossible.
Not only illiterate people have this problem, low literate people as well, albeit less extreme.
It’s hard for these people to function in our modern society, where almost everything we do
incudes some kind of reading or writing. This is also the reason why it’s strange that there
are still illiterate and low-literate people in our society. That’s why we came up with the
following question:

How is it possible that, in our modern society, there are still illiterate and low-literate
people and how do they manage to function in our society?

To answer this question we came up with the following topics and sub questions:

 What are the causes of illiteracy?

In which we will discuss the reasons why people are illiterate or low-literate. How the
became illiterates and why they stay illiterate.

 What is the history of illiteracy in the Netherlands?

In which we will discuss the history of illiteracy in the Netherlands. How did illiteracy
drop to the low number it is at today, why did it drop and how did it drop. The time
period discussed is since the Netherlands was first formed, the time before that is left
out, as we cannot speak of the Netherlands at that time.

 What are the daily difficulties and/or problems illiterates come across?
In which we will discuss the problems and difficulties illiterates have to cope with
every day. As previously said, our society revolves around writing and reading. If this
is taken out of someone’s life, a lot of doors close. These doors and the problems
they take with them are discussed in this part.

 What is the correlation between literacy and social position?

In which we will discuss the correlation between literacy and the social position of a
person. How does (il)literacy affect a person’s professional career and how do they
cope with it.

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 Are there any solution to the problem?

It’s clear that illiteracy is a problem, but what can be done about it? how can regular
people help? How can a society make illiteracy levels drop? What does the state do
to help illiterate people and what are some of the institutions that help these people
and what do they do?
Using these questions we will aim to give an explanation to our main question. We want to
give more attention to this topic as illiterate people do not get a lot of help and are often too
ashamed to search for help, even though, for them, it’s a big issue.

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Facts and figures low literacy

It is surprising that a quarter million Dutch people are completely illiterate; this means that
250 000 people aged from 16 to 65 in the Netherlands are unable to even read a single
word, or even write their own name. 1.3 million people (more than the inhabitants of the
province of Utrecht) have low literacy, or are functional illiterates, which means that they
have learned to read and write, but have not developed these skills enough so that they can
use information around them in their daily lives. 1 in 9 Dutch people cannot fill out their
curriculum vitae, or even write out a grocery list.

Highest education of low literates

42,3%
38,4%

9,2%
2,9% 4,8%

Primary VMBO or MBO 2, 3 or HAVO or HBO or WO

education MBO 1 4 VWO

Mind you, these numbers are only an indication of the current situation; it is possible that
the university graduates were literate during their schooling, but became low literate
because of an accident of some kind.
Effect on economy
Of course, being illiterate is extremely unfortunate for the person involved, but there is
another reason why illiteracy is a big problem.
In 2013, Price Waterhouse Coopers
estimated the costs of illiteracy in Annual costs (in millions)
The Netherlands. Their study Crime; € 0,40
showed that illiteracy costs us
annually €560 million, of which
Welfare; €
approximately 63% is caused by 76,00
reduced productivity. Per illiterate Healthcare; €
127,00
it comes down to €140, or €140
million uncollected tax.
Tax; € 144,00
Unemployment benefits are
approximately €75 million annually. Productivity; €
183,00
All these numbers indicate that it Unemployment;
would be benefiting, not only for € 26,00

the state, but also for the individual

to reduce illiteracy.

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Causes of low literacy

There are several causes which may lead to a person’s low- or even- illiteracy. Most of the
time, these factors are interlinked and together, they create an impassable obstacle for the
subject, if without help.
Home setting
When children grow up in a bookless environment, when one of their parents, or even both
their parents have little to no skill in reading and or writing, they also tend to grow up to be
a non-reader, which eventually may lead to low literacy. It could be possible that a he or she
gets the lessons needed to learn to read or write, but when these skills are not stimulated
enough, it could lead to nothing. When their parents cannot read, mistakes in writing will
not be pointed out and corrected. Children with autochthonous parents can encounter these
problems, but children of parents with a different nationality will encounter these problems
even more, even when their parents can read and or write, but in their first language. This
problem is increased with parents who write in a non-Latin alphabet like Arabic. Low literate
adults were most of the time not exposed to the tools we had during our childhood; crayons,
comic books, etc., due to factors like poverty. These tools can stimulate a child to grow an
interest for reading, and later writing, so if without these stimuli, the child will grow to be
uninterested in reading and, or writing. Sometimes they also had to work on a farm or
family business, so they would not be able to do schoolwork. Psychological problems can
also cause a child to be unable to focus on learning; these can be caused by things like a
divorce or domestic violence.
Education
Not every adult got the same opportunities as everyone else; like mentioned above, they
might have had to help on the farm, or support their family financially in other ways. Some
chi If a child has a chronic illness they also cannot follow lessons as they should be followed,
they could have moved frequently, which causes a disruption in their learning, not only
because of the change of schools, but also, for example, because they miss their friends and
thus are emotionally affected by moving.
Sometimes, the standard way schools teach, is not the right way for certain students.
Without having to have a disorder of some kind, some students just cannot comprehend
things that are being said by the teacher, and when these students are not guided enough,
they may not develop literacy. Also, when a student does have a disorder such as ADD, and
they are not guided sufficiently, the same result may occur. Students can also have to deal
with undiagnosed dyslexia, and because of this, they may get frustrated with themselves and
or the schoolwork and just give up.
Current situation
Of course, there are several courses to help illiterate adults become literate, but there is still
a huge amount of illiterate adults. One of the reasons for this is shame. There is still a stigma
attached to illiteracy, which causes people to hide their illiteracy from the outside world that
sometimes even their partner does not know of their disability. This shame refrains them

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from ‘coming out’, admitting they do not know how to read and or write, let alone following
a reading course. Some adults have very negative memories of their school years; they might
have been bullied, they were frustrated they could not understand a single thing; they have
developed a kind of trauma which again keeps them from going back to school and learn
what they would have learned decades ago.
Some illiterates have already adapted to their illiteracy and have accepted and adapted their
daily life to it. They might think that they will never learn how to read anyways, so why
would they try again? Some are completely unaware of their disability that they, like
previous examples do not bother going back to school.
Most of the time, adults from the age of 40, have been active in the same field of work for
their whole life and did not feel the need of learning how to read and or write. Their
illiteracy could also be the cause of why they have been working in the same field of work
for their whole life; and so, the vicious circle is complete.

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The history of illiteracy in the Netherlands

The Netherlands have, ever since its beginnings, always been a prosperous country. This is
partly due to its place in Europe, but also partly due to the low illiteracy rate in the
Netherlands. Ever since the Netherlands was created, there has been liberal politics. This
meant everybody was free to have their own faith and choose their own job. Due to the
Netherlands being so liberal, lots of discriminated groups, like for example Jews, came to the
Netherlands, where they could express their faith freely. Most of these immigrants were
highly educated business men. They brought their knowledge to the Netherlands and made
the economy flourish, this leaded to what we now know as the ‘Golden Century’. All this
sudden prosperity lead to more schools opening and even normal people going to school.
This is why by 1775, 75% of the boys went to school. From that time on, the literacy rate
went on to grow to approximately 99% today. Let’s take a closer look.

As can be seen in the figure to the right,

between 1775 and 1800, in most parts
of the Netherlands the illiteracy rate
was above 30%. These were mostly
farmers and working class men.
Women are not included in this map, as
most women couldn’t read. They
weren’t expected to read either.
We can see that in the east and south
of the Netherlands the illiteracy rate is
a little higher than in the west. This is
due to the fact that the west was more
prosperous, which meant more
education. It’s also due to the fact that
in the regions with higher illiteracy
people were mostly catholic. Even
though the Netherlands was a free
country where every faith was
accepted, Catholics were still
suppressed a little bit due to what they
had done during the separation of the church.
Even with this seemingly high illiteracy rate, the Netherlands was one of the countries with
considerably lower illiteracy rates than the rest of the world, especially southern European
countries. In these countries the Bible wasn’t available in any other language than Latin, so
there was no need to learn how to read. While in the Netherlands, which was more
Reformed, the Bible was available in multiple languages, which made people want to read.
The years passed by and the illiteracy rate started falling drastically. The graph below shows
how the illiteracy rate fell from the 1770s until the 1900s.

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We can see the illiteracy rate has gone down with an almost linear line. The fact that, from
the 1800s, the state had to control the schools was a big plus for most people. This meant
schools weren’t private anymore and that anybody could now go to school without paying
too much. The role of schools in that time was mostly to teach children social and Christian
virtues. This meant there weren’t any real classes like we know today. The kids did learn how
to read and write and that helped a lot. The Netherlands was one of the first European
countries to have the state regulate schools. The Christian virtues taught at the Dutch
schools were mostly protestant virtues.
This meant the catholic people didn’t
bring their children to school, as they
would learn the wrong religion. This
brings us to the next map. In this map the
difference between catholic and
protestant can clearly be seen. This meant
the protestant region was also more
wealthy and prosperous than the rest. The
Catholic region was also neglected by the
government, as most high ranking
politicians were protestant. Through the
years this slowly got better and by the end
of the 18th century the catholic regions
were on the same levels as the rest of the
country. This was due to the fact that
from 1857 the parents were allowed to
start their own special schools, but they
had to finance them themselves. Only in
1917 all schools got the same state
finances. But this cannot be seen on this map.
In 1874 the ‘kinderwetje van Van Houten’ was introduced, which prohibited children until
the age of 12 of working in factories. This of course also lead to an increase in literacy, even

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though many children now had to work on the land. Their family needed the money and the
law only applied to factories. The ‘kinderwetje van Van Houten’ was the start of a new are in
the Netherlands. As this law lead to a compulsory education law in the Netherlands. This law
was accepted in 1900. From 1900 onwards the illiteracy rate in the Netherlands has always
been below 5%. The only people that are illiterate now are people who can’t go to school,
like heavily handicapped children, or immigrants that never learned the Dutch language.
Today, there are 250000 people in the Netherlands that are illiterate and 1.3 million people
have trouble reading and writing. This means even to this day, with all the multimedia and
the laws that oblige people to go to school, the problem is still around. The problem is even
bigger, as illiterate people are not able to function right in our society, while 200 years ago,
illiterate people were able to function normally.

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What are the daily difficulties and/or problems illiterates come

across?
As mentioned before illiteracy is a national problem. From research can be seen that the
main problems are poor incomes and a very low self-esteem. When looked closely at the
literacy rate there can be spotted a very obvious difference between incomes. When people
are illiterate the wages are very low when compared to people who are able to read and
write. Therefore the GNP per capita is a lot different between those two groups as can be
seen in the table below.

Literacy rate Per capita income

below 40% less than €600
above 98% more than €12,000

When looked more closely to those outcomes of the research you can come up with some
clear and definite reasons for those differences in wages. The most obvious reason is that
employees do not want someone in their business who does not have the abilities to read
and or write. Because nowadays 99% of the jobs require abilities to read and write. That has
to do with the fact that jobs are no longer based on handcrafting but merely based on the
capabilities of the mind. In the past you could easily find a job where reading and writing
was unnecessary for instance a blacksmith. But due to the technological improvements
these jobs no longer exist. So people are forced to work in an environment where reading
and writing is required. By this said you can understand that it is fairly difficult for illiterates
to find a job, because only one percent of the jobs available are suitable for illiterates. The
difference between the GNP per capita has to do with the unemployment rate of illiterates
but also with the fact that jobs which do not require the ability to read and write are almost
all less paid jobs when compared to the other 99% of the jobs available. Then there is the
next problem for the illiterates and that is that they feel ashamed when trying to apply for a
job. This can also be linked to a low self-esteem, because they feel like they are less
compared to others. Which in fact is not the case, because they lack a skill but may have
other skills yet to discover. People are unaware of the problems which illiterates encounter
in terms of signing up for a job. The problem already starts with asking for an application
folder or going on the web to apply online. Illiterates are not able to read the folder, so how
can they sign up for the job then? The next problem is their curriculum vitae, how are they
able to write their CV when they are not even able to write their own name let alone writing
a motivation letter. As a result these illiterates are not motivated at all to apply for a job,
because they get turned down before the employees even reads their letter or CV.

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Besides problems which illiterates face in their work environment there are also social
problems which illiterates come across every single day. Imagine your normal working day.
You get up at 7:00. Go downstairs for some news to get up to date. But how? If you lack the
ability to read how can you get up to date with what happened in the world? When they go
to work the next problem occurs. A road block with a sign with something written on it, with
information about the road problems and how to avoid them. But illiterates cannot read this
so they are unaware of the problems and have no clue what to do now. Now they need to
send their boss an email saying that they are too late (that’s at least what normal people
should do. Not saying that they always do though.) But again how? They can’t even send
their boss an email explaining why he is too late. This already is a small example of daily
difficulties illiterates come across. Besides these problems, there are also problems which
can be life threatening for those people. Imagine if someone has food allergies and he needs
to know the ingredients of a certain products the only way to find out is to read the
ingredients which are listed on the package but he can’t. So he is limited in his choice of food
so this is for example a side effect of illiteracy. Now most people will say why don’t they just
ask an employer of a store to read out loud the ingredients of the package? But this leads to
their last problem and in our eyes their biggest problem and that is their self-esteem.

They feel less than others simply because they are not able to do something which others
take for granted. They do want to be treated especially although this is a national handicap.
So they come up with all sorts of excuses to distract people from their actual problem. The
most common situations in which this happens is when someone asks an illiterate to write a
note. Nine out of ten times he will reply with something in the order of: “I forgot my glasses”
or “my handwriting is not so nice yours is better, so why don’t you jot that down”. This is
done because writing and reading is such a normal skill to acquire that illiterates feel strange
and sometimes a bit thick to tell them they can’t read or write. Afraid of the reaction of
others. But by not telling their ‘secret’ they feel insecure about themselves. Which has an

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effect to their daily life as well. Research has shown that illiterates are most of the time
people who live a poor social life. Because they are all the time on the lookout for possible
‘dangers’ which includes reading and or writing. So relaxation with friends is not in the
dictionary of illiterates. You can compare illiteracy with a handicap which in fact it is.

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Correlation between literacy and social position

The thing which is maybe one of the most frustrating factors of the existence of illiteracy in
today’s society, is the fact that illiteracy cannot be attributed to one single group of people;
lowly educated people are not the only ones who are illiterate.
However, there is a correlation between literacy and socio-economic position;
approximately 32% of the lower class has low literacy. These people are extremely
disadvantaged as opposed to the literate part of the lower class; they already don’t make a
lot of money, but they also cannot get higher positions because they cannot write out
reports and they do not have the necessary qualifications.
There is not one gender significantly less literate than the other, as are immigrants and non-
immigrants.

Gender division Division immigrants/non

immigrants

Male Immigran
47% Non- ts
Female immigran 35%
53% ts
65%

Immigrants
Of these 1.3 million functional illiterates, approximately two-thirds are autochthonous, or
native Dutch, so one-third of all the low literates are immigrants. This group can be split into
three sub-groups:
 Those who are not educated to read and or write in their country of origin and
are not literate in their first language. This is often the case with non-western
immigrants, and especially the women. One of the causes for this could be the
conservative traditions of countries, where girls don’t get to go to school as much
as boys do.
 The second generation immigrants, who do get educated, but who live in a home
with non-Dutch speaking parents. This can result in a language problems which
will be so deeply rooted that they cannot be overcome without special education.

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 Those who are literate in their first language, but know little to no Dutch; this is
actually not really functional illiteracy, but functional illiteracy in our society, as
they still cannot write a job application in Dutch or help with their child’s
homework.
Aside from that, immigrants face extra difficulties in learning the Dutch language or adapting
to this society because of inadequate knowledge about this society, certain insecurities and
acknowledgement of qualifications.

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Are there any solutions to solve this problem?

Research.

In general it is fairly difficult to help out illiterates. This has simply to do with the fact that
people feel quite quickly ashamed for their handicap in terms of reading and writing. Besides
that they also feel ashamed, because they lack a lot of knowledge of their own language of
birth. Different problems and uncertainties that are discussed on previous pages play a role
as well

The ministry of OC&W asked the well-known ‘Steunpunt Volwasseneducatie’ (Steunpunt VE)
to create an educational report about the entire domain of illiteracy in education. In this
report a lot of different agencies are being discussed, not only the formal ones but also the
informal ones are taken into account. Then ‘Steunpunt VE’ asked ‘Langedijks SWO’ to make
this report. This is the research that we used and we thought that this would be very
interesting to use for our PWS, simply for the fact that it clearly focusses on different
businesses, informal ones as well and most important of all they focus on our topic illiteracy
and their problems. In this research they also looked at possible solutions in the future and
whether every solution they come up with is suitable for that particular situation.
They did a research at companies and businesses. This research included a simple in every
business for 20 employers at least. Every business and company in the Netherlands took part
in this research.
There are 40.000 business and companies with at least 20 employers in the Netherlands
(CBS, 2008). After the samples where send to all companies the feed-back was very little.
Only 17 reports which were send back were filled in entirely but the results were good
enough to use. In the results they show that: 7 times there was a only one single training
given, ten times there was multiple training given. And 4 out of 17 times they hired someone
from the ROC to educate those people. Once there was a cooperation with the mayor of the
town and for the rest they hired institutes to educate the illiterates. In 16 out of the 17 cases
the company paid the bills for their education and once the illiterates paid for it themselves.
This type of research is in our eyes very important to get an overview about what can be
improved in businesses to solve the problem named illiteracy. In this case it is very
important that the people who take the course do not have to pay for their own course but
that the company pays for it. By this way someone will choose to do it, rather than not to do
so. A repetitive course is very important, because the results are better and people feel
more comfortable. This has simply to do with the fact that they get more hours of education.

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Not only institutes such as the ‘Lagedijks SWO’ make sure that solutions become clearer for
illiterates in society but also other institutes help out a little. Together they try to set up a
process that will prevent the increase of illiterates and try to help out illiterates in order for
them to read and write after they did some course.

One clear and definite example is the ‘Week van de Analfabetisering’ that is on an annual
base in September. The goal of this week is to give some attention to the importance of the
ability to read and write. So that illiterates can definitely see that they miss out on a very
important skill. Also globally there is more and more attention for illiteracy. Every single year
on the 8th of September there is an international Global illiteracy day. This day gives again
attention to the importance of reading and writing.

Another activity is the national event of ‘Festival van het Leren’. This event takes place in
September and has the main target to encourage adults to develop even further in terms of
their capabilities. The target group of this day is people who do not take learning for granted
and have a hard time learning new things. There is also a commercial side of this day
because libraries, schools and all other institutes do their talking and give information about
possible education they can sign up for.

There are also special websites for those who have difficulties with reading. An example of
such a website is www.mijnabc.nl. This site helps you out ad gives you tips while reading.
And there is even an option to let this text be read out loud.

The well-known foundation ‘Lezen en schrijven’ plays a big role in terms of the problems of
reading and writing in the Netherlands. The Dutch princess Laurentien is the chairlady of this
foundation and asks for attention to make people more conscious about the fact that this
problem still is relevant. The foundation fulfills for roles for solving these problems. The first
role is for the supercharger, who stimulates and activates organizations and indivuals in the
private and public sector. The second role is for the communicator, who pays and asks for a
constant attention to this problem named illiteracy. The third role is for the one who
executes the ideas and helps to bring responsibility in practice. The fourth and last role is for
the center of knowledge who informs individuals and organizations about illiteracy and
linked themes.

The activities are focused for the society to show that illiteracy an important individual as
well as a social economic question, national and international. Also they want to show that
those questions pragmatic and jointly to solve projects and start concrete projects.

It also is very important to combine strength, for the society between organizations to
stimulate and/or cooperate between relevant players. Finally the foundation wants social
attention to create national literacy and more importantly if achieved keep it.

The prevention of illiteracy or another form of arrears of the Dutch language is in our eyes a
very important aspect. If this happens correctly, the amount of people who take the course
for illiteracy will drop significantly in the future. With this said it is very important that young
children get sufficient education in the Dutch language and or spelling. Young children have
a less hard time studying and learning things compared to adults. There also needs to come
a special en very well executed plan in which students of a young age get structured classes
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so that will result in a motivated child that likes to learn the Dutch language and can fit in
our society.

If a child is absent due to diseases, there needs to be a clear plan. So that those children still
have the possibility to follow classes and maybe home schooling would be the best idea. One
of the main causes of illiteracy is missing out on information of the development of the child.
If this can be solved we are a step closer to the prevention of illiteracy. It is therefore
important that every school has a clear plan ready for every situation in which a student
needs extra attention if it is about the Dutch language. This of course is necessary for every
single subject.

Not only children with a specific problem with reading and writing should be qualified for
such a way of education. Also children which encounter problems with concentrations
should be qualified to get more attention. Later on they will find out that it has been useful
for them. Those children have a lot of difficulties storing and processing obtained
information compared to children who do not have such a disorder. With this said we can
conclude that it is very important that children get one on one attention and extra lessons.
And the extra lessons will be one on one, so that this child can concentrate better.

By taking such measures we should start preventing students to have a arrear when he or
she goes to school. Setting up is step one, doing it is the second one. And the final one is to
control if they are actually doing it. In our eyes step 3 is very important.

But who should be in charge to accompany these children? The perfect cooperation would
be between parents, teachers, the town and maybe some experts. Parents should always
stimulate and motivate their children to achieve their goal. It is important that teachers
know how they get on with young children who have a language arrear or suffer from a
concentration disorder. For the town it would be ideal to appoint people who are experts
and trained to cope with illiteracy so that they can help out schools and other institutes. Last
but not least it is very important that there will be many experts who track down students
their progression, so that that can if necessary increase the hours of education for a
particular child.

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Conclusion

From our figures we can conclude that there is still a lot of illiteracy in the Netherlands, as
well as in the rest of Europe and the world. This is a big issue as they are not able to do a lot
of things. Normal things everyone does like checking your phone, your email, regular mail
and reading a newspaper are just a small part of the things they can’t do.
Luckily, illiteracy has dropped drastically in the last few centuries. Due to good governmental
choices and financial support for schools. Everyone can go to school now and is even obliged
to go to school until the age of 18, which is a big step considering only 150 years ago children
were working in factories from the day they could stand on two feet. Unfortunately, not all
countries are arranged this way, which gives these countries a higher illiteracy rate. They are
trapped in a vicious circle. They have no money for education and now education means no
career, which again means no money for their kid’s
education.
The causes for illiteracy are not only the person
itself, but also in some cases the state. Some
people don’t have the luck of getting good
education, which will lead to low-literacy or even
illiteracy if they don’t even go to primary school.
Sometimes it’s also the family situation they’re in.
A person who is first generation immigrant or even
an immigrant him or herself, can have great
difficulty learning the Dutch language. As their
parents don’t know the language they are raised in
a foreign language. This will already give them a
disadvantage over the other kids in his or her class.
This is a pity, as illiterates are not stupid, they just
never had the chance.
As illiteracy and low-literacy are both still problems in the
Netherlands, the government and several organizations try to
help these people. There are advertisements in the streets and
on television to tell people to help illiterates they know.
Advertisements are also created to create awareness that
illiteracy is really a problem and not the person’s fault, like the
SIRE commercial above and to the right depicts. The
Netherlands even has a day every year which is specially
created to help illiterates and low literates. Special campaigns
are even set up to help people. So, although the government
could do even more, they are on the right path.

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 PWS | Matthieu van den Beld, Figou Stam, Jin Xian Souw

This is why we concluded that the Netherlands is on the right track to defeat illiteracy. The
only problem is the fact that most illiterates are ashamed. They don’t dare to say they can’t
read or write as they think they will get laughed at or people will think they’re dumb. They
use excuses to hide their illiteracy. It’s this kind of ideas that commercials like the SIRE
commercials on the previous page try to tackle.
That’s why the answer to our main question, How is it possible that, in our modern society,
there are still illiterate and low-literate people and how do they manage to function in our
society, is:
The biggest reason is poor education, a disadvantage in school or immigration. They manage
to function in our society by living rather isolated and using excuses to not read or write.
Employment, if they have work, is usually only manual work and they need help with
everything regarding reading and writing, although they are often afraid and ashamed to
ask. That’s why there needs to be more attention to this topic, as most illiterates live quite
unhappy lives.
We hope to have informed you enough on this topic and maybe change your mind or
activate you to take action yourself and help illiterates in your surroundings.

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 PWS | Matthieu van den Beld, Figou Stam, Jin Xian Souw

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