757 million people suffer from an affliction; one that causes a number of major world issues: AIDS, Female Genital Mutilation, Radicalisation, Infant Mortality.
What would you say if I told you you could help cure this affliction, in five seconds flat, without once reaching for your wallet? Would you do it?
If you've got this far, don't worry, you don't have it, this 'affliction'. Because if you did, all you would have seen thus far would be something like this:
είναι όλα ελληνικά για μένα
The affliction in question, of course, is illiteracy. 757 million people in the world are illiterate, of which 32 million are adults in the USA (just in case you're thinking it's solely a problem for developing nations). Indeed, one in five children in the UK leave primary school unable to read. One in five. Think about it for a moment...
One person who has also thought about it (a lot) is actor/model Lily Cole. In a speech made this morning to MPs in the Houses of Parliament, Cole spoke passionately about the 'Alphabet of Illiteracy', a body of work which reveals how many of today's major worldwide issues are fundamentally caused by the problem.
'Illiteracy is not a sexy or exciting topic,' she said outright in her speech. 'People aren't directly dying or overtly suffering of illiteracy.... But when you look at the relationship between illiteracy and most other global issues, a statistical pattern emerges... Illiterate people are significantly more likely to be affected by [those problems]. Which, understood the other way around, allows us to interpret illiteracy as a cause, rather than a symptom, of many of the world's challenges.'
Better known for her work as a model – she has worked with such designers as Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada, and was named Model of the Year in 2004 – Lily has been a prolific campaigner for a number of humanitarian and environmental causes (WaterAid, Environmental Justice Foundation, PETA). She has even founded her own altruistic social media network – impossible.com – dedicated to the giving and sharing of skills.
But literacy, she tells me afterwards, was something she'd never thought much about. And being truly honest, neither had I. 'It really struck me as a causal issue that if you don't address [it], you're going to have many other problems to deal with,' she said.
So let's look at these 'other problems' – what exactly are they? At the top I wrote clearly: AIDS. Does illiteracy cause AIDS?
Well, if you can read and write you are five times more likely to know the facts about HIV. So what happens if you can't read and write, and therefore don't know them?
The same question can be asked of Ebola. The World Health Organisation last year found that illiteracy was one of the main stumbling blocks workers in West Africa came across when trying to educate communities on how to contain the disease.
Then think of all the other issues it could be applied to – Malnutrition, Radicalisation, Gender Inequality, Poverty, Crime and so it goes on. Illiteracy is an epidemic.
Cole was speaking on behalf of Project Literacy, which is a global coalition of NGOs and organisations, attempting to put literacy at the forefront of the lense through which world challenges are viewed. Its aim? Simple. To gather over 1 million signatures of support to present to the United Nations on International Literacy Day on 8th September. Then something might really be done about it.
It's almost too easy... There must be something else we, the public, can do?
'I unfortunately don't have the answer,' Cole responds. 'I think probably it's a mix of things. I think as parents [Cole gave birth to daughter Wylde last September] it's probably quite important to take literacy quite seriously with your own children. Obviously the education system needs to address this issue. And I think that's part of the poignancy of speaking at Parliament; to look to government to help with that.... [but] first and foremost, right now, [sign] the petition...'
Cole gave birth to her daughter Wylde last September / Instagram
Cole was joined at the event by Big Issue founder Lord Bird. He followed the actor onto the podium where he animatedly told the tale of his youth: a life spent largely as a 'little racist' in and out of prison in the post-war years of Britain. It all changed for him, however, when he learned to read.
Also lending their support to the event was UK top model, David Gandy. 'I've come to learn, like everyone else here really,' he said, when I asked what his connection to the project was. 'I'm an ambassador for a charity called Achievement For All – a new programme [that] goes into schools and helps the vulnerable one in five children that we are talking about here, [that] end up illiterate leaving school...
'We're trying to explain to the government at the moment that if something like this is done with literacy, [vulnerable people] don't end up in crime... don't end up in prisons... don't end up [on] welfare. Exactly what we're trying to prove here.'
On the last day of fashion week, it was frankly inspiring to seeing the UK's most eminent faces in fashion giving up their time to support something so totally unrelated to the fanfare of the five-day long trade fair. They had to get themselves to Parliament, make impassioned and informative speeches, butter up journalists (dreadful), all at 8:30am... All you have to do is sign your name by clicking here.
757 million people. Has a signature ever been so important?
P.S.
Ahead of World Book Day next week, Lily Cole and David Gandy told us their favourite books...
**Lily Cole: **'I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but my favourite writers in the past were Salinger [and] Capote, real geniuses with words. When I was younger it was Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland.'
David Gandy: 'One of my favourite books is the Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill. There are many, many books I could reel off, you probably wouldnt know them, but that one, I probably grab every few months just to make myself chuckle. Wish I could come up with [such] quotes and quips...'