Improvements
will boost livelihoods and environmental conservation
9 May 2006, Rome – More accessible and better oriented literacy and
education programmes for fishing communities will improve their livelihoods
while diversifying their income-generating activities, according to a new report
prepared by FAO.
The report will be presented on May 10 by Professor Bryan Maddox from the
University of East Anglia. It is based on field work carried out mainly by the
Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme, a partnership between FAO, the
Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID) and 25
countries in West and Central Africa (http://www.sflp.org/).
“Fishing communities often face educational disadvantage due to geographical
and social marginalisation. Education providers are often unable or unwilling to
provide services tailored to mobile and migratory populations which include many
fisherfolk,” the report says.
“Literacy and education are crucial for fisheries management, environmental
conservation and livelihoods diversification,” says FAO expert Benoît Horemans,
who coordinates the Programme.
“However, they should be task oriented, flexible and responsive to the
fishing communities’ needs and aspirations. This is what we call “functional”
literacy which, in contrast to formal schooling, has an applied, real-life
orientation,” Mr Horemans explains.
For example, fishermen should be given appropriate education to deal with
satellite navigation, understand the mechanisms of microfinance and use new
information and digital technologies, such as mobile phones and the Internet.
In Uganda, Nigeria and Gambia, although levels of school attendance in
fishing communities are high (60-80% having attended school), people have not
gained enough functional literacy skills to enable them to access resources and
to understand official documents, the report points out.
Vernacular literacy
The FAO/DFID report also underlines the importance of “the vernacular
literacy and numeracy practices of small scale fishing communities which often
go unnoticed”.
The report recommends to building on existing strengths: “Fishing
communities’ existing traditions and practices are an important resource to
build on.”
The report highlights some examples of successful literacy
projects/programmes in fishing communities, such as the Bay of Bengal Programme,
the Icelandic Development Agency’s Programme on Lake Victoria in Kenya, where
adult literacy classes for women encouraged debate on health and business issues
such as improving the income of traditional enterprises and developing new
sources of income.
The Education for Rural People Global Partnership and the FAO
Interdepartmental Working Group on Training, which includes experts from both
the Fisheries and the Sustainable Development Departments, participated in the
elaboration of the report. Its ultimate goal is to reduce the education gap
between rural and urban communities with a view to achieving the Millennium
Development Goals.
Contact: Pierre Antonios, Media Relations, FAO,
pierre.antonios@fao.org, (+39) 06 570 53473, (+39) 348 252 3807
