During the past several years, representatives from many of the world's pre-eminent organizations that are committed to literacy have met to assess the means for cooperating on a unified campaign to enhance the value and status of literacy among all peoples. The inherent potential for such a grouping should be evident, but it is equally clear that association alone brings no guarantee of results. Hence the decision to seek the resources needed to create a meaningful, multiple-year action agenda. The participating 21 groups that make up the International Literacy Network (ILN) include:

• American Library Association
• Between the Lions/WGBH
• Center for Applied Linguistics
• Center for the Book/U.S. Library of Congress
• International Literacy Institute
• International Reading Association
• National Center for ESL Literacy Education
• National Coalition for Literacy
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• National Institute for Literacy
• Reach Out and Read
• Reading Is Fundamental
• Reading Rockets/WETA
• SIL International
• Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies
• U.S. Department of Education
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
• United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
• Verizon Communications
• World Bank

All share a commitment to ensuring a stronger international role for literacy in human development efforts worldwide. We realize the vital necessity of finding effective avenues of exposure in order to promote the global advancement of literacy. We also recognize the risk of adhering to any single organization's goals for literacy because the challenge is greater than any one institution can address.

The ILN member organizations have a mutual understanding of the importance of achieving strong and cohesive American participation in the drive for literacy and for connecting various literacy initiatives through a single network in which all can benefit through association as well as idea and information sharing. While acting without a formal mandate we are nevertheless aware that the effort produced through collaboration promises to yield a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

A collaboration to ensure the highest profile for a portfolio of literacy activities will promote advocacy efforts for literacy in a world where media programming has a powerful influence and a lasting impact. To succeed, the effort will need to be on the scale of the challenge itself, which demands a partnership such as ours, one that can leverage and motivate industry, media and government alike to sign on. We are pleased that Verizon has joined the ILN as our first corporate partner.

The ILN has discussed numerous innovative ideas of an inclusive nature, capable of tapping into the vast U.S. media machine and gathering momentum by rallying forces of other domestic-based literacy groups and spreading to libraries, schools and community groups. The potential for raising the profile of the cause of literacy to generate public and private support for change is enormous.

The leaders of this collaborative endeavor are well aware of the challenges inherent in scaling up the cause for literacy, but they also hold the conviction that by building a critical mass of positive interest, these challenges can be met.

Since its inception in 1967, International Literacy Day (September 8) has been commemorated around the globe, including the sponsorship of awards to recognize exceptional programs that promote literacy. International Literacy Day has had a relatively low profile in the United States in the past, but greater efforts are being made to make the day's celebrations more accessible to the American public in order to raise the profile of this important day and the issues surrounding it. Hence, the ILN's launch of an awareness raising campaign focusing on an American audience on September 7, 2001.

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