This Saturday was International Literacy Day – celebrated by many with the act of snuggling up with a book. Following some great organizations on Twitter and Facebook, I came across this infograph and other statistics that really got me thinking about how different my life would be if I couldn’t read.

An estimated 122 million youth are illiterate and 61% of them are girls. 61 million children that should be in primary school aren’t. 31 million of those children live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Think about what literacy means to them. It’s a way out and a way up. Nelson Mandela once said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” and yet for millions of children every day they are lacking that basic human right – access to education.

Below is a collection of tweets about International Literacy Day and the basic human rights – literacy and education.

–liz