ITU Regional Workshop on “ICTs for Women's Empowerment in the Arab Region” Kuwait, 5-6 Oct ICT for Illiteracy Eradication of Arab Women

Initiative brief Initiative aims at developing training materials for each Arabic characters designed to teach Arab women. It further aims to help Arab women to integrate in the society as a step forward toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals by Main Partners - ITU - ALECSO - UNESCO

Justifications Considering how important literacy eradication is to the region, and the fact that 5 million adults in the Arab States region lack the basic learning tools to make informed decisions and participate fully in the development of their societies, tackling the literacy challenge is a moral and development imperative. the majority of adult women in Arabic speaking countries such as Mauritania, Morocco and Yemen are illiterate, presenting a strong barrier to social and economic empowerment for women. 39 million illiterate women in the Arab region. The lack of dedicated curriculum as reference materials to guide teachers contributes to low participation in adult literacy classes. Steady relationship between literacy and employment. Marginalization of females because of their gender or because they live in rural areas is no longer acceptable.

Objectives and Goals Objectives To prepare online training materials for illiteracy eradication for Arab Women. To prepare train the trainer materials to enable trainers to develop the online training. To conduct a pilot train –the trainers training session using the online materials. To establish specialized programs in training adults on basic skills. To build on the learners’ prior knowledge and on the community learning environment and opportunities. To encourage distance education using ICT to better fit adult learning working schedules. Goals Contribute to improved literacy rates for women in Arab countries. It is a step toward the larger goal of women’s socio-economic empowerment.

ITU’s Role ITU’s role ITU financed a feasibility study on the use of ICTs for Arabic illiteracy eradication for women in this study identified existing experiences in literacy training in general and more specifically the use of ICTs for literacy training. ITU has shared the feasibility study with UNESCO-Beirut and ALECSO. Based on this feasibility study, ITU, UNESCO-Beirut and ALECSO have agreed to a tripartite partnership to jointly develop free and open source ICT Arabic literacy training materials for women. ITU will support the project through in-kind expertise and a cash contribution.

Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) Role ALECSO’s role ALECSO has developed a literacy training manual for teachers and training materials based on the simple Arabic “”FOSHA” ALESCO has already produced 4 CD-Roms that include ten dramatic episodes of about 15 minutes “drams” covering 10 out of the 28 Arabic characters, along with simple mathematics. This educational materials has been used in many Arab countries through the educational centers of civil society. The programme will be completed and modified by cooperation and organization between partners (ALECSO,UNESCO & ITU). ALECSO will support the project in contributing its existing learning materials, and the materials of the rest of the 28 characters.

UNESCO’s Role UNESCO’s role

Expected Outputs: 1.Online/mobile phone training materials created to teach the 28 Arabic characters used in FOSHA for women’s illiteracy eradication. 2.Skilled trainers on the use of the developed illiteracy eradication materials. 3.FREE and open source ICT Arabic literacy training materials developed for women.

Strategy Phase1: the development of the training materials and testing them in a train-the –trainers session. Phase2: the project will seek partnerships with UN agencies and other international organizations, regional organizations, private sector as well as NGOs. The project will be implemented in cooperation between ITU, UNESCO and ALECSO. The project will invite regional and UN organizations, private sectors and NGOs to take part of the project scope. The project will be an open source program for all Arab countries.

Timeline Timeline: Phase1 will be implemented between 2011 and 2012 Phase 2 of attracting additional partners to disseminate the trining materials will follow from The full project will follow the same period of the ITU Arab Regional Initiatives on Broadband access network, open source software and Arabic digital content

How to support this Initiative? ITU is always seeking to encourage all ITU members, both from the public and private sector to support of this initiative: - sharing training materials designed to eradicate Arab women illiteracy. - Serving as mentors and trainers. - offering financial support. ITU counts on the support of its members to run the goals of this initiative into reality.

Thank you Rouda ALAMIR ALI