Take a couple of minutes and seriously think about this month’s theme. What springs to mind? Do you have an image of children in “developing countries”? But according to a report by the ABC, "Forty-seven percent of the Australian population are functionally illiterate," meaning that “they can't read the instructions on a medicine bottle, they can't read a map, they can't read a recipe." OK, the report is dated 2012, but it is unlikely that matters would have substantially improved. On a less critical view, the Australian Bureau of Statistics says that, as at 2020, about 4 out of 5 people have attained year 12 or Cert II. That still leaves about 20% of the adult population who are struggling. Sounds like a task simply too enormous? Well, if 25 years ago Rotarians had thought it impossible to achieve the inoculation of more than one billion children some 2 million children today would not be walking. They would be sitting in a wheelchair (if they had one). |