India will showcase success stories from Karnataka including the role of the Mysore radio station in utilising technology for promoting literacy at an international conference to be held in Bangalore.

The three-day conference of E-9 countries comprising Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria  and Pakistan, will be held from October 4.

The participants in the conference, which is being jointly organised by the National Literacy Mission, Ministry of Human Resource Development and UNESCO, would be witnessing the school initiatives by Intel and radio and computer literacy achievements of Karnataka at Bangalore and the Abdul Nazir Sab State Institute of Rural Development, Mysore.

The radio literacy programme was launched last month in collaboration with the Mysore AIR station. It is a 60-day programme based on the primers of the National Literacy Mission, of which 48 episodes of 30 minutes each are for teaching, learning process.

The remaining 12 episodes of 60 minutes would be devoted to discussions and phone-in programme.

All the 13 AIR stations in the State are broadcasting the programmes simultaneously, being made use of by more than 18,000 Continuing Education Centres and Nodal Continuing Education Centres.

The EDUSAT programmes in Gulbarga and Chamrajanagar districts would also be mentioned in the deliberations to showcase the best practices in India. EDUSAT is the first Indian satellite built exclusively for serving the educational sector.

The conference will be inaugurated by HRD Minister Arjun Singh and WIPRO chief Azim Premji will deliver key note address.

The objectives of the conference include increasing awareness about use of information and communication technology (ICT) for promoting literacy and sharing best practices of utilising ICT for literacy as well as exploring and building partnerships on ICT for literacy.

The E-9 countries share certain common challenges: large populations and demographic pressures, substantial remote populations, relatively low levels of government funding for education, problems in reducing adult illiteracy and a wide literacy gap between men and women.

The Beijing Declaration adopted during the E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting held in 2001 underlined the importance of harnessing the great potential of ICT to achieve the goals of Education for All, especially literacy.

In addition to the sharing of country experiences, there would be presentations on the successful cases in Asia, interventions by Intel, IIM-Ahmedabad, Tata Consultancy Services, International Literacy Institute, etc.

There are 304.10 million illiterates (100.73 million are in 15-35 age group) in the country, a problem that is being tackled by the National Literacy Mission through convergence of efforts of different stakeholders and use of innovations and dissemination of best practices across the country.