by Alison R. Bernstein, vice president

Education, the arts, religion, culture and, more recently, media play vital roles in the life and vitality of communities and nations. All of these domains help us understand who we are, what we know, what we can imagine and how we function as diverse groups and as individuals trying to make sense of our place in a rapidly changing world. They help us express what it means to be human, and they provide commentary and critique on human events. They also illuminate differences and similarities, and can serve as forces for positive social change by promoting democratic values, human achievement, pluralism and respect for diversity.

At a more practical level, parents struggle throughout the world to get access to education for their children. They know that higher levels of education lead inextricably to reducing poverty and that education is a key to development, an asset that lasts a lifetime. Yet, nearly one-sixth of the world's 5.9 billion people cannot read or write, and most of them are girls and women. Expanding educational opportunity has thus become a central concern of longstanding and new democracies.