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Skriven 2007-01-16 23:31:06 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0701161) for Tue, 2007 Jan 16
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Mrs. Bush's Remarks in a UNESCO Roundtable
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For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
January 16, 2007

Mrs. Bush's Remarks in a UNESCO Roundtable
UNESCO Headquarters
Paris, France



9:41 A.M. (Local)

MRS. BUSH: Thank you so much, very much, Ambassador. I appreciate it very
much. And thank you, Director General Matsuura, for everything you do for
education worldwide, and all the other focus issues of UNESCO. I really
appreciate it.

I also want to recognize Assistant Director General Smith, and thank you
very much for bringing this roundtable together.

Thanks also to each one of you who have agreed to participate in the
roundtable, and who work all the time to make sure children and adults are
educated worldwide.

And this also gives me the opportunity to recognize each of the observers,
all of you who represent other UNESCO countries. Thank you so much for
joining us today and for working with all of us to make sure children and
adults everywhere learn to read.

Three years ago, UNESCO launched its Decade of Literacy, a 10-year
initiative to extend the benefits of reading everywhere, to every corner of
the world, and especially to the world's neediest communities. DG Matsuura
mentioned more than 800 million people worldwide are illiterate; 77 million
children worldwide are not in school. And of the 781 million adults who
cannot read a simple book, more than two-thirds of them are women.

Ending illiteracy is a challenge for every country, yet investing in
literacy and education helps governments meet their other fundamental
requirements, improves opportunities for children and families, it
strengthens economies, and it helps keep their citizens in good health.

Literacy instruction requires textbooks and teachers. And one of the things
we're going to talk about today is a way that we can make sure teachers are
trained around the world.

In Ghana, I visited the Accra Teacher Training Center, which participates
in the Textbooks and Learning Materials Program. As part of the program,
six American universities are partnered with six countries in Africa, six
African governments, to produce and distribute 15 million primary school
textbooks for African children. The program is part of President Bush's
African Education Initiative, and it's a $600 million commitment that will
help train more than 900,000 teachers in sub-Saharan Africa by 2010.

In Kabul, I visited the Teacher Training Institute, which was established
through a partnership between the government of Afghanistan and USAID. At
the institute, women have a safe dorm to live in when they come in from the
provinces to be trained as teachers. Then they go home and they train more
teachers in a cascading effect with the purpose of opening and staffing as
many schools as possible.

In New York, as DG Matsuura mentioned, our government partnered with UNESCO
to host the White House Conference on Global Literacy. The conference
brought together 30 first ladies from around the world, and 39 education
ministers, representative from 67 nations, and nine panelists who spoke
about literacy and programs that are working and transforming lives in each
of their countries.

Thank you to UNESCO for your work on the upcoming regional conferences,
which will build on the success of the White House conference.

Today I'm looking forward to hearing from each of you about literacy
programs that are working in your countries, and I'm excited to hear your
thoughts on what all of us can do to promote education for children and
adults worldwide.

Thank you all very much. Thank you for joining me for the roundtable.
(Applause.)

END 9:45 A.M. (Local)
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