The UNESCO “2nd Global Report on Adult Learning and Education” provides an overview of the state of literacy around the world, its progress, and issues in provisions and methodology. Literacy is an important global issue because education is a right under 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because illiterate people are “more vulnerable to poverty, social exclusion, unemployment, [and] poor health” among other factors (17). Specifically, UNESCO uses Paulo Freire and Amartya Sen’s work to point out that “literacy has the potential to enhance people’s ability to act in the pursuit of freedom and to empower them to interpret and transform their realities” (17). I agree with this statement because literacy can open doors, especially economically, and it makes it more difficult to be taken advantage of. The power of literacy is limited, of course, by outside factors such as infrastructure.
The UNESCO report uniquely frames literacy as a life-long, continuous continuum, as opposed to the traditional literate/illiterate dichotomy. Their main argument is that the dichotomy framework does not do justice to the complexity of literacy because it operates in various contexts both inside and outside of schools. Therefore, literacy cannot be equated with amount of schooling, when viewing literacy as 1) skills, 2) functional practices, 3) cultural practices, 4) capabilities, and 5) critical reflection (21-2).
I personally agree with this view in light of the global economy entering the information age. Literacy skills that were useful before may no longer be useful, or may need to be modified to a new context. Therefore, it is impossible to classify someone as 100% literate. As the report states, “literacy becomes a kind of moving target” (25). I believe this is useful, but it can also complicate matters because there is no solid goal, or way, to firmly know if you finally reached “literate” without using traditional definitions.
Insofar as the populations we work with in the jail and youth rehabilitation centers, I believe the dichotomous definition is used more. Specifically, programming provided to them tends to be focused on formal schooling and some job training. However, I definitely see the continuum present with the youth due to the variety of skill levels they present in the workshops.
On Community Literacy 