On Tuesday night, in Qufu, Shandong’s birthplace of Confucius, three educational programs won this year’s UNESCO Literacy Confucius Award.

Brazil’s Accessible Literature program was honored for promoting the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities through education, sports and culture.

Accessible Literature creates, reproduces, and publishes books in multiple formats, including Braille, Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), audio descriptions, and easy reading with pictograms. According to the program, the program has benefited 2,022 of his learners, 55% of whom are girls and women.

Malaysia’s Sarawak State Library was awarded for a program designed to help build a comprehensive support network for digital competencies and skills in the digital-enabled community.

From 2018 to 2022, more than 81,000 learners benefited from the program, according to the library.

The Morteno Linguistic Literacy Institute of South Africa was also recognized for its programs to prepare children, schools and communities for formal schooling. Engage communities and parents through local languages ​​and dialects.

In a speech delivered online at the awards ceremony, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, said, “The pandemic has not only amplified the global education crisis, but also encouraged innovation and partnerships to keep learning going. produced.

Literacy Confucius Award winners provide a great example of innovation. They demonstrated how to target the most marginalized and vulnerable people to build learning spaces, Giannini said.

Confucius (551-479 BC), a Chinese educator and philosopher, is credited with being the first to establish private schools to accommodate students of different social classes. His thoughts and ideas have had a great impact not only in China but also abroad.

Sponsored by the Chinese government, the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy recognizes contributions to functional literacy using technical skills to assist adults and out-of-school youth in rural areas.

The award has made an important contribution in eliminating illiteracy around the world and promoting the development of education, said Shandong Governor Zhou Naixiang.

Zhou said the award has played an important role in promoting Chinese traditional culture around the world, and Shandong will explore more innovative ways to inherit and promote traditional culture.

Due to the pandemic, the winners received their awards online. The award ceremony was the main activity of the 2022 China International Confucius Culture Festival and the 8th Nishan Forum on World Civilization, which ended on Wednesday.

With the theme of “Human Civilization Diversity and Human Common Values”, the Nishan Forum was attended by more than 600 experts, scholars and embassy envoys from home and abroad.

The consensus reached at the Forum will jointly address the risks and challenges in the development of civilization and build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world of lasting peace, common security and common prosperity. It called for a concerted effort to

Liu Chuan contributed to this story.