Category: People

{{BY JILL KRASNY }}

When employees feel excluded, they’re bound to act out, according to new research. And that’s definitely not good for business.

Bad things happen when people feel left out at work, according to new research from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business. And those behaviors can impact your business.

“We already know how some people react when they’re definitely being excluded from a group, when someone is mistreating them or abusing them,” Marie Mitchell, co-author of the research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and professor of management at UGA, told Science Daily. “But what we sought to examine this time is: What if you’re not sure?”

It’s easy to feel left out when everyone “forgets” to invite you to lunch or happy hour. But trouble arises when you fail to give colleagues the benefit of the doubt. “When a person believes that they are risk for exclusion, they assume that there is something about their personality or their makeup that suggests they’re not a valued group member, so they have to do something above and beyond what they’re currently doing in order to demonstrate their value to the group,” Mitchell told the blog.

Simply put: These overlooked co-workers are more likely to go out of their way to undermine colleagues, cheat to advance their work group, and tell bold-faced lies to other work groups. It’s the kind of behavior that creates a toxic work culture where distrust runs rampant.

To test the idea that perceived outcasts are bad seeds in a company, Mitchell and her co-authors ran an experiment. Participants took personality tests, then were divided into groups of four and asked to hold conversations with each other for 15 minutes. Afterward, they were told they would take two tests that would be scored against another group.

All four members took the first test, they were told, but the group needed to vote on three members to move on to the second. The researchers then asked participants to write who they thought that should be. Afterward, those participants completed a computer task and received an update about whether they would advance to the next test. Some were told only one member voted for them, while others were told three members voted for them.

Now that the participants were primed to feel excluded, the researchers had them begin unscrambling a set of anagrams, or jumbled up letters that form common words. They were asked to record how many they solved. But there was one problem: the anagrams couldn’t be solved, so anyone who said they did solve them was lying.

As a result of the priming, a lot of people cheated. “There’s a generally human tendency when faced with these kind of situations for individuals to misreport what they did,” Mitchell told Science Daily. “But those who had a high-need for social approval and were in the group that were being excluded, they were far more likely to cheat.”

For a manager, the takeaways are these: If you notice an employee’s not fitting in, try to find ways to include him or her. Beyond that, encourage your team to be more inclusive and reassure the frustrated employee not to take everything so personally. Sometimes people really are too busy.

Finally, encourage your employees to let their freak flag fly. Not only will they begin to feel better about themselves, others will appreciate them too, since nothing draws people in more than embracing your quirks.

{A wedding took place in early September in Iowa. But it wasn’t just any ordinary wedding, it was a wedding between two people who have been together for 72 years and finally made it official. Two women, Vivian Boyack and Nonie Dubes, who have loved each other since 1942.}

For so long, these two women kept their love private. Dubes recalls how she was struck the first time she saw Boyack when they were students at Iowa State Teachers College.

“I could tell you exactly what she had on. A gray dress with black velvet trim and big pearl buttons,” remembers 90-year-old Dubes.

After a fateful move brought Boyack to Dubes’ town, the pair met and quickly hit it off.

“What then?” they were asked.

Silence.

“This is difficult for us to talk about,” admits Boyack.

“No one knew what was happening. We didn’t even know it was anything special. I was just drawn to her. That’s all,” says Dubes.

“The hand of God was there. Suddenly, we were in love,” Boyack explains.

From that day forward, they felt like they were in hiding. For 72 years, these two women lived together like a typical married couple, one doing the cooking, the other the yard work, all the while looking like two average female roommates to outsiders.

Their lives remained the same, even after the 2009 court decision that made same-sex marriage legal in Iowa. The two women admit they didn’t give marriage a second thought until their friend, Jerry Yeast, came to visit.

The women confessed that Yeast was the first person they had ever talked to about their relationship.

“I was dumbstruck,” he says. “I kind of blanked out, until I said, ‘My gosh, this is Iowa! You should get married.’”

Thanks to him, Dubes and Boyack finally began to consider marriage. For years, the women had held back, wanting to keep their private life to themselves. After much deliberation, they decided to take the step and get married.

The pair finally exchanged their vows, perched in their wheelchairs, at their local church. More than 30 people gathered to witness the ceremony that would further bind these two women together.

While Boyack and Dubes admit they have taken a big step in their relationship, they joke that even a wedding can’t change their relationship.

“The only difference is we know it’s legal and nobody can do anything about it,” Boyack says.

Watch the video above to hear more about Boyack and Dubes’ 72 years together. Click here to read more about their wedding.

Here at the USA TODAY network, not only do we want to provide you with the current events of the day, but also a little dose of inspiration while you’re getting your news fix. Inspiration Nation is our way of providing you with that jolt of good news to bring a smile to your day. For more great stories like this, click here.

USA TODAY

{A renowned Rwandan footballer Desire Mbonabucya, 37, will marry a wealthy woman Brenda Thandi, 35, both residing in Belgium. }

This website learned that the romance between Brenda and Mbonabucya has ended up with the decision to marriage.

Born in South Africa, Brenda has business in Congo Brazzaville, France and Belgium.

“You’re the queen of my heart. It is you who fill my heart with permanent happiness. Thank you my love Brenda Thandi. Nothing can express the feelings I have for you, “wrote Mbonabucya, former captain Kiyovu Sports on his Facebook account.

Sources close to his friends argue that bridal wedding of this couple are expected towards the end of this year.

{You may have forgotten what Aristotle and Nietzsche wrote about, but in tough times these deep thinkers can improve your leadership ability.}

The contemporary emphasis on instant gratification has seeped its way into almost every aspect of our lives–from the creation of credit cards to fast food to smartphones, we rarely have to wait for anything. But mindfulness and thoughtfulness are important for leaders to practice. You need be decisive, but if your values and beliefs get swept away by the fast pace of life, your behavior can change in negative ways.

As a leader, you need to give yourself time for self-reflection and think about philosophical issues like “values, character virtues, and wisdom,” David Brendel, an executive coach and philosophical counselor, writes in Harvard Business Review.

Brendel cites a recent study that found the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a critical region of the brain for evaluating emotional, motivational, and cognitive information, is activated during times of self-reflection. “Activating the ACC via self-reflection, in other words, can promote business success by helping leaders to identify their values and strategic goals, synthesize information to attain those goals, and implement strong action plans,” he writes.

Setting aside time to map out your worldview is a necessity for anyone. Keeping both of your feet on the ground is important no matter what your job is, but if you’re leading a company you should make sure your behavior is always at its most fine-tuned. During times of crisis, personal or professional, you must have the ability to have “productive discussions with [your] team about next steps” or fall back on “reasoned decision-making,” Brendel writes.

“Contemplating timeless philosophical values can fuel timely behavior changes in the service of growth and lasting success,” he says.

If you haven’t recently thought about the bigger picture, what’s important to you, and what your position in this world means, you should make time to do so. Below, Brendel outlines four questions, each based on a great philosopher’s teachings, that he believes every leader needs to ponder.

{{Socrates}}

“What is the most challenging question someone could ask me about my current approach?

{{Aristotle
}}

“What character virtues are most important to me and how will I express them?”
{{
Nietzsche
}}

“How will I direct my ‘will to power,’ manage my self-interest, and act in accordance with my chosen values?”

{{Sartre
}}

“How will I take full responsibility for my choices and the outcomes to which they lead?”

{{Before we can understand why such attachment happens we need to understand how the child develops his personality in his early years. After going through certain experiences the child develops certain unconscious goals that shape his life style later on.{}}}

Sigmund Freud a general pyscologist generally assumed that early in life, a young infant’s primary attachment object would be its mother because the mother fulfills the infant’s oral desires through feeding. However, he believed that the father begins to play an important role in development when the child enters the phallic stage of development, which generally occurs approximately at the age of three. According to Sigmund Freud, during the phallic stage, children begin to form an incestuous desire for their opposite-sex parent and an antagonistic rivalry with their same-sex parent. The resolution of this stage of development occurs when the child, usually at the age of six, renounces their desire for their opposite-sex parent and begins to identify with their same-sex parent.

In many families, you find daughters playing around with their fathers, sharing secrets and so on more than their mothers and vice versa to boys. Parents who talked to IGIHE emphasized the attachments in such words, Muhoza a mother of two daughters said It makes me so depressed to hear people tell me that my daughter soon will want nothing to do with me, and that all girls are daddy’s girl. However she continues saying that every parent has something to do with a child’s life”.

Kagoyire a mother of three daughters and two boys said, My daughters so loves their daddy, they do have a special bond, but so do we. They have the things they like to do and we have ours. I think little girls melt a daddy’s heart and they are more apt to give in to certain things. I have 2 sisters, we were all daddy’s girls, he could do no wrong, still can’t! But I’m extremely close with my mom as well. I love seeing my daughters’ relationship with her dad.

IGIHE consultated a pyscologist doctor in CHUK, Alex Rutagarama and explained more as to why such attachments occur he said, it depends on the stage of the child, such bonds can’t fail to happen however it is not easy to identify why it happens. Men are more playful to kids than mothers that’s why most girls are attached to their fathers , so according to that i said boys learn that mother is more forgiving of them (than dad who disciplines them) and girls learn they can get away with more with daddy (than mom who will chastize them).. Being asked if it can’t cause any harm to the child’s growth or a bad effect to the parent’s side he said it’s a normal theory in pyscology the more the child grows, the more he gives value to his parents accordingly however there are cases that happen when the love goes beyond measures and develop sexual attraction that leads to jealous where a daughter can get married to his father and a son may kill his father to marry her mother.

The different attachments can’t fail to happen and the love between parents and children is always needed however parents should limit their love and affection to children to avoid such cases, he added.

According to the views above, fathers are more playful to kids which attracts girls to be more attached to their fathers. Parents shouldn’t worry about this, all they have to do is to balance all children equally to avoid jealous among children.

{{kalindabrendah@gmail.com}}

Food fights are certainly one way to get a point across.

Dutch people gathered in Amsterdam for Tomato Fest (or Tomatengevecht) on Sunday to protest Russia’s embargo on foods imported from the European Union, according to CNN. Russia imposed the embargo in response to western sanctions against the country.

In Amsterdam’s Dam Square, protestors gathered for an hour to stomp, squish and smear 120,000 tomatoes deemed unfit for human consumption.

About 1,000 participants purchased tickets at 15 euros ($19) each, with proceeds from Tomato Fest going toward tomato growers hurt by the Russian sanctions, according to the Associated Press.

The festival was modeled after Spain’s famed La Tomatina, in which thousands of participants bask in the messy glory of one of the world’s biggest food fights.

Mashable.com

{The students at a Charter School in Washington D.C. were told that they were going to have a very special guest. Can you imagine their disappointment when the President showed up? One student even told Obama that she was really hoping that someone like Beyonce would visit the school. }

President Obama and First Lady Michelle visited the school for the National Day of Sevvice and Remembrance on September 11. The President was hoping to make a good impression on the students. Instead, he left them disappointed.

One student, named Madison, told the president that she “really wanted it to be Beyonce.”

The president had a good sense of humor about it, saying that his daughters Malia and Sasha would probably want the same thing. Madison turned her little insult into a compliment when she added, “but then I realized it was going to be you and that’s even better.” But the president wasn’t buying it.

Obama said: “Thanks for saying that. Especially in front of the press. Even though I know you don’t mean it.”

Social News Daily

This is my first time being depressed for this long a time. So I’m no expert on it. But I can say with confidence that the thing that sucks about depression is that you know something is wrong with you, but you’re not sure how to fix it.

So here’s a guide to lifting yourself out of depression when you’ve tried workouts, vitamin D, meditation, (insert failed remedy here) and none of it has worked.

This worked for me and hopefully it may help you…

1. {{Celebrate the Small Wins}}

This, I think more than anything, will help you to deal with your depression.

There are so many days where you try to lift yourself out of your funk, only to find that 20 minutes later—whether you went to the gym to jump on that treadmill or not—you still feel like shit. It’s okay!! It’s okay to feel this way because it’s not you! But remember to celebrate the fact that you even went to the gym!

Let me give you an example…

Before this 5 month spurt, I woke up every morning at 5:30am. I jumped out of bed, drank a glass of water, and headed to the gym to start my workout by 6am. After my workout, I came home and showered by 7:15am so that I could begin meditating by 7:30am. After 30 minutes of meditation, I would take a quick nap, get ready for work, and be out of the house by 8:45am.

It may sound rigid, but it was a GREAT routine! One that made me very happy to start the day off right by completing the most important tasks of my day early!

Well throughout this depression, I’ve wanted to return to that routine. But I’ve failed and failed and failed again. Some successes thrown in there, where for a few days (5 days tops!) I woke up at 5:30am. But the successful days were sporadic and the failures FAR outnumbered the successes.

Each morning that I came even close to waking up that early, I would just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep because I wouldn’t want to get out of the bed.

And at night, I’d know that I should turn off the tv so that I could go to sleep and wake up early, but I’d punish myself for not feeling right and keep the tv on anyway (because that makes sense…). Then I’d feel like crap the next day for not waking up early like I intended. This cycle repeated itself day after day… after day.

This self-sabotaging behavior, or psychic masochism, is more common in people suffering from depression.

Finally, I realized I wasn’t going to win this battle. At least not in the way I was attacking it: as an all or nothing proposition. Instead, I would attack my morning problem in small bites.

Each morning I would try to wake up 5-15 minutes earlier the day before. But here’s the catch: I wouldn’t actually wake up… I would just celebrate the fact that I COULD’VE woken up “if I wanted to”!

Sounds crazy, right?! But it worked!

Each morning I set the alarm on my phone for 5-15 minutes earlier than I did the day before. And the next morning when it was time to wake up, I would just turn it off and decide whether or not I’d actually want to get out of bed.

99.997% of the time I’d decide to stay in bed. But I still felt good about it because I knew I could’ve woke up at that time had I wanted to!

The next day would roll around and I’d do the same. “15 minutes earlier” I’d think to myself. And I’d turn over and go back to sleep.

It’s funny, but although I didn’t actually reach my goal of waking up early like I wanted to, I felt better about coming closer to achieving my goal. Any goal!

I started applying this to other things I was having trouble with.

I would start work for projects at night that I know I needed to finish soon. Even if I spent only 15 minutes on it before I went back to doing something worthless, I’d feel like I spent 15 minutes more than I would’ve if I had otherwise gone straight to watching Kourtney argue with Scott about getting drunk and punching his fist into a mirror the night before. (This is kind of embarrassing that I know this…)

Even with typing this post, I had to decide whether to sit on my couch and… well, do nothing. Or hop on my laptop for a few minutes and bang something out.

Already I feel better!

Celebrating the small wins is the best trick I know for making yourself feel better in any situation.

Harvard psychologists agree.

Allow yourself to fret over not knocking out the big projects or to-do’s another time! For now, we’re just working on doing something.

I promise, it helps!

2. {{CULTIVATE POSITIVE SELF-TALK}}

(YEAH, THE STUFF I SAID WON’T GET YOU OUT OF THIS… “ALONE”, I SAID!)

It’s unrealistic to think we can be completely free of depression, but we can learn to understand it enough to not give it total control over our lives.

Despite the fact that positive self-talk alone won’t get you out of your funk, it does help.

Remembering that your depression is a temporary state of mind and reclaiming hope that it will be alright in the end is a helpful reminder that things will get better.

Also, reminding yourself that you have so many experiences and events to look forward to in your life (traveling around the country, your wedding, spanking your children) does help to put things into perspective, although it may not totally alter how you currently feel.

Positive self-talk is a very practical method to break patterns of negative thought.

If you’re looking for a resource to guide you, check out What to Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter.

3. {{SPEAK WITH FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND THOSE THAT LOVE YOU ABOUT HOW YOU’RE FEELING}}

This is a difficult one. It’s something that I struggle with. But I find that when I turn to the people I trust most not to judge me, they show sincere interest in what’s going on with me and want to help. Even though they may not be able to, just having them listen makes me feel better.

Love is a powerful force. And knowing that those who love you truly care about the direction of your life can reinstate hope and a drive to get better.

Also, I noticed that those whose calls I didn’t want to return because I felt like I owed them something or because didn’t want to have to explain myself, they cared too.

In fact, I haven’t come across one person who I have shared what I’m going through with who doesn’t care.

People genuinely care about your situation and want you to do better.

Remember this when you’re down because it’s so easy of us to think the opposite when things are going wrong.

4. {{WRITE}}

Taking inventory of your life by writing down exactly what you’re thinking and feeling in that moment is one of the best tools I know for uncovering some really interesting things about yourself.

The insights you learn from your own writing can be invaluable in helping you to understand your state of mind and how you may overcome it.

The best part is that you don’t need to have a mission for your writing. No structure. No theme. No intended outcome or length. Just write.

Sometimes all it takes is a couple of words with a pen and paper (or laptop) and the rest of the words write themselves.

Write whatever messed up shit that comes up and filters from your mind to the paper. I’ve written some pretty messed up stuff. But each time I write, I learn a little more about myself.

The action of writing down everything that is trapped inside of you is a freeing event. It’s like taking a bottle of your emotions and unscrewing the top to let them out. Even when what you write is really messed up, somehow it feels better to let it out onto paper.

At times what you see on the page is flat out ugly. Other times, you may find bits of compassion, gratitude, and hope in there.

Here’s a suggestion: make writing down whatever is on your mind the last thing that you do before you go to sleep at night. Do it in a journal or moleskin notebook, so that you have all your writing in the same record book.

You don’t have to examine it. You don’t even have to read it. Just let it out and hit the lights.

You’ll feel a little better.

5.{{ ACCEPT THE FACT THAT YOU’RE DEPRESSED. AND TRY NOT TO MINIMIZE IT.}}

This took me a while…

For weeks and weeks I would try to pull myself out of it by trying to push through the blockade of not wanting to workout or whatever.

I kept telling myself “I’ll be fine” and trying to pull myself together—like I’d done with everything else in my life to this point—using positive self-talk and continuing to do anything that should make me feel better.

It’d move me in the right direction for a few days or even a week. Then all of the sudden, I’d be right back where I started.

Low to the ground.

I tried reaching out to a friend from middle school who posted something to Facebook about how depressed she was and how she wished things would be better. I sent her a message saying that I was going through something similar, though on a much smaller scale, and that maybe we should chat to see if we can help one another out.

She said something I’ve heard medical professionals and people who’ve experienced depression say before: “No depression is better than another. They all affect people differently, and they all suck.”

She’s right.

What she was saying to me is that what I’m going through sucks just as bad as what she is going through. There’s no ‘Scale of Shittiness’ that I can compare my pain to hers.

Not only would that be pointless, but it’d probably suck just as bad for the winner as it does the loser (“Oh, I’m not as screwed up mentally as you are, yet I still feel like crap and am complaining about it”.)

Being able to accept the fact that you’re depressed is a huge step.

It helps to eliminate that feeling of blame for not doing things which you feel like you should or for feeling the way you feel—because it’s not totally in your control.

Once you’re able to accept the fact that you’re feeling depressed (which is to say, after you’ve identified that depression is in fact what you’re experiencing), you’re able to take the necessary actions to remedy it. Whether that’s vitamin D pills, sun lamps, medication, or counseling, it should be prescribed to you by a medical professional.

Read more at http://under30ceo.com

BY Jessica Stillman

{When it comes to how the world works, the space between our hopes and expectations and reality can be large.
}

Optimism is protective–we all know that confident people have a leg up in realizing their ambitions, and “fake it till you make it” can often be a successful strategy. Plus, looking on the bright side generally feels good. Scientists even tell us that realism is correlated with higher levels of depression.

But let’s be honest: Sometimes all of us can take the rose-tinted-glasses routine too far. Just hoping things will turn out well stops us from making tough choices, believing the best about others can get you taken advantage of, and a failure to look at the world as it truly is can be harmful to both your business and your personal life.

In what circumstances are many of us guilty of wearing blinders? Great crowdsourced answers to this question recently appeared on question-and-answer site Quora when someone wondered “What is an example of something true that nobody generally wants to admit?” While some responders had particular axes to grind (it’s true that U.S. drug prices are radically higher than elsewhere in the world, for instance, and maybe a gamma ray burst could destroy earth, but those aren’t really things you can act on tomorrow), many more offered healthful reality checks that most of us could benefit from, including:

1.{{ Most people don’t know what they’re doing}}.

Well, at least you’re not alone. According to writer Amit Banerjee, many, many people are stumbling around in their careers and personal lives, bumbling into their next relationship, job, or major life change. “Most of us actually don’t know what to do with our lives,” he writes. “We are just figuring something out, and to some extent, pretending on the way.”

Engineer Kris Rosvold words this slightly differently: “We, almost all of us, are faking at ‘being adults.’” While student Sri Teja puts a positive spin on this tough truth: “The people you look up to are just as nervous as you are.”

2. {{Looks matter.}}

Is it fair? No, but it has been scientifically proven again and again. So there’s no point in denying reality, student Dania Faruqui suggests. At least that way you can manage your own tendency to judge a book by it’s cover and make clever decisions about how you present yourself.

3. {{No decision is a decision.}}

Making tough choices is hard, but you can’t avoid them. Not deciding has just as many consequences as any other alternative. “You have to make decisions all the time,” developer Taalai Djumabaev reminds people in his response. “Even postponing a decision is your decision. Many people just wait until they have only one option and think that they can now make a decision, yet, it has been already made.”

4. {{We’re the same as the crazy people we read about in history books}}.

“Everyone looks at the past and recognizes flawed human beliefs and behaviors, but no one realizes future generations will do the same with us,” investor Chuck Gafvert points out. Culture changes, technology advances, but intellectual errors and human frailty remain constant. The exact content of our mistakes will certainly be different, but rest assured this generation is doing something ridiculous.

Or look at this one another way and you’ll see that it’s hubris to assume we’re safe from repeating some of history’s stupider moments. “Think ‘XYZ from the past could never happen today; this is the 21st century!’?” asks entrepreneur Dan Deceuster. “It can.” Be aware that something you believe or do is likely to be looked on as ridiculous by history and stay humble (and vigilant).
5. {{Suffering is real, constant, and random.}}

OK, you probably know this intellectually, but for our sanity (and our mood), most of us go through most of our days not actively thinking about how much suffering is going on in the world at any given time. And the worst part? That suffering is largely random. “The circumstances of our births are completely random,” PR professional Peter Lenardon reminds us. “Everyone is just a consciousness that came online in a body somewhere. I got ‘white middle-class guy in Canada.’ Someone else got ‘little girl in a brothel.’”

What’s the point of facing this terrible truth? It might put your own problems in perspective (or even motivate you to make the world a slightly better place). “You should keep it in mind that your worries may not be the only problems in the grand scheme of things,” writes founder Ishan Rana. “Just the realization that millions of people would do anything to see their kids sleep for a night in your bed, or wish that they could eat those vegetables you just trashed, would do our planet a world of good.”

What would be your answer to this Quora question?

{The right to education is fundamental human right, interconnected with all other human rights. It is essential for the participation in social and cultural life, development, freedom, and empowerment. It is the bedrock of democracy and effective political participation. It breads healthier societies with lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancies. So why are so many children and adults deprived of their right to education even when States have the obligation to protect, respect and fulfill the right to education? What does literacy actually mean for UNPO Members? }

International Day of Literacy, celebrated every year on 8 September, was proclaimed by UNESCO as a day to highlight the importance of literacy for individuals, communities and societies around the world. This year, the focus is on “Literacy and Sustainable Development”, since literacy empowers people to make decisions on questions of economic growth, social development and environmental integration; it “is a basis for lifelong learning and plays a crucial foundational role in the creation of sustainable, prosperous and peaceful societies”. While literacy raises individual self-esteem, it can also create a sense of responsibility across societies.

Yet, education is not accessible to all equally, nor does it adequately complement diverse and multicultural societies. Despite numerous international instruments proclaiming the universality of the right to education, indigenous peoples do not fully enjoy this right.

All too often, poverty, nutrition, and access to social and health services are associated with low literacy levels. Around the world, indigenous children often have fewer educational materials, such as books and computers, to support their learning process. As the gap in literacy between indigenous and non-indigenous communities widens, it further disadvantages indigenous populations when they cannot meet real-life challenges or participation in public life more generally.

Ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural discrimination at schools is a major barrier to equal access to education, and is the cause of poor performance and high drop-out rates for indigenous or minority communities. When indigenous and minority populations underperform, it feeds a vicious cycle of poverty, social fragmentation and underdevelopment, but also marginalization and exclusion from political, economic and social life on a national and international level.

Another obstacle to indigenous and minority education levels and literacy levels is that most educational systems do not incorporate traditional values of indigenous people and accurate information on their way of life. This diminishes their sense of dignity, recognition and consequently, thirst for knowledge.

The question of literacy is an important one for UNPO. Illiteracy is unfortunately widespread across many UNPO Member communities, mirroring social inequality and injustices suffered by countless indigenous and minority groups. UNPO remains concerned about the unequal levels of human development in different sections of societies, and the disadvantaged position in which many UNPO Members communities find themselves, because they lack proper access to education.

For example, China now boasts of a literacy rate of 95%, while the population of East Turkestan is far behind with a level of approximately 40%. Similarly, in Indonesia, literacy is estimated at around 92%, but only 57% of West Papuans are considered literate. Rwanda, a post-conflict success story, is still far behind in literacy levels. Currently only 71% of the whole population is literate, but the Batwa, Rwanda’s third ethnic group, has a worrying literacy rate of 33%. Particularly worrying is the fact that for many indigenous groups, literacy levels remain unknown. When data is unavailable, appropriate strategies are hard to develop and implement to correspond with the needs of the people.

These discrepancies between the literacy levels demonstrate the marginalization of indigenous peoples and minorities (particularly women, who consistently have lower rates of literacy), and the almost insurmountable obstacle to their empowerment.

Literacy is an essential component and determinant of their ability to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, preserve their environment, promote their democratic causes and find creative, non-violent solutions to conflicts, which affect them.

UNPO will continue to stand with our Members in their demand for equal, free, accessible, and quality education free of discrimination and adaptable to the specific needs of various communities UNPO represents as a strategy of promoting their sustainable development and effective participation in the creation of prosperous and peaceful societies.

UNPO