At Unique Literacy Empowerment, we assert that basic literacy is necessary to identify words and symbols and make sense of words in context. It is the ability to read and make sense of what you read and write. It is the basis of all literacies like Business & Digital Literacy, Entrepreneurship & Business Literacy, Business & Financial Literacy, Life & Healthy Literacy, Life & Social Literacy, Travelling, and Tour Literacy.

Why Basic Literacy in Life & Business?

It is the foundation for learning to read and write and access, read, analyze and evaluate and utilize the information for creating value for the user, who could be an entrepreneur in any organization or industry. Basic literacy is necessary for education, research, and understanding ourselves as people and as organizations. It is essential for mental development. It opens our eyes and mind. It helps us to think and solve problems. It is necessary for our communities and community development. It is imperative for social and economic understanding and a sustainable economy. The ability to read and write promotes dialogue, social progress, and appreciation of life. Be it at home, school, work, business, civil society, and the world.

Holistic Literacy Empowerment Program

That is where we come as Holistic Literacy Empowerment comes in through our literacy and learning short courses to inspire and empower people and organizations to appreciate the ability to read and write as a foundation for Holistic Literacy to make the world a better place to live for everyone. How can people and organizations encourage holistic literacy in their locations? Here is how you can help to promote holistic literacy skills.

Appreciate Books

Basic literacy starts with the ability to read letters, words, phrases, and sentences from books written by other people like you and me. So, the starting point to have basic reading skills is from appreciating books and feeling like holding, opening, and looking through books that appeal to your sight and senses of sight and curiosity to want to know what is hidden deep into the pages of the composed words. Starting that way will sharpen your desire to read any book you can get hold of and try to see what you can understand and take away as information for expanding your knowledge and experience in life and business. Though the internet has become the mainstream source of knowledge and information, the ability to read starts with the appreciation of holding, opening, and reading books, especially for children and youths.

Adopt a Culture of Reading

 It all starts with you at home, school, work, life, and business. A culture of reading means you don’t see reading as just a habit, but a lifestyle you instill in yourself and your children if you have any and if you are a teacher, your students. And you demonstrate it by always reading anything you can get hold of. Adopting and upholding a culture of reading at home, school, work, and in business will inspire anyone around you to follow suit, especially at home and school. At the workplace and in business, it will empower your colleagues to see you as a source of information and knowledge.

Reading is the only way to open a conversation with other people about what you are reading and have read. I remember a conversation with friends about how dogs are untrustworthy near strangers, for they can attack anyone unsuspiciously. And I ended up supporting that notion with the story I had read in a magazine when a dog attacked the wife of its owner when she was coming for the weekend to see the husband who stayed with the dog at their farmhouse. My friend ended up indicating I always read terrible stories. The point is, I am always reading stories about life and probably about everything in life and business. That is the culture of reading when you allow it to stick with you like a bug.

Promote a Reading Culture

When you have mastered it, it’s time to promote it at home, school, work, and in life and business. With homeschooling slowly becoming the norm with some parents who have seen it as a better option for their children, the culture of reading becomes a necessity for expanding knowledge and exposure to information. It is a common belief that a child who reads is a pleasure to teach and to talk to. Their knowledge and understanding of the world around them are way ahead of those who do not read.

So, a culture of reading would help to strengthen the appreciation of books and open them to discover knowledge and exposure to information that can expand experiences of things around us for understanding the world around us. You can only have the power to promote something you believe in. So, demonstrate your love for books and reading at home, school, work, and business. Let us dive into the best way you can promote a culture of reading.

Buy Books for Yourself and Children

Do not buy toys for yourself or your children. Buy books as birthday presents and any other holiday celebrations. That will instill reading culture in yourself, your children, and everyone around you. A bookshelf in your home can never be underrated. Buying books is a powerful way to instill a culture of reading books at home. A child who grows up reading books will grow to love reading books at school and after. I witnessed this with my children. I was always into reading magazines and had a good collection of Mill and Boon. I also always collected library wedding bargains. Some I got free from their outdated publication. It was a way of having books around me and looking at that worth reading to discover new ideas about life around me. It was from those collections I discovered reading is an escape from the hard facts of life. In books, you can always get lost and find yourself in another world which can be therapeutic and healing to the mind and soul. So, collect books and further the cause of the reading culture.

Read and Learn from Reading

The smart way to increase knowledge and learning is through reading and exposure to books through visiting books shops, libraries, or online browsing and surfing the internet. At Holistic Literacy Empowerment, we have always believed in reading, learning, and creating for survival in the creative digital economy. An empty mind with no exposure to knowledge and information finds it hard to imagine and create something new. The creative power to innovate and improve any existing business idea or device comes from reading and analyzing other people’s published works. Reding empowers you to think critically about life and business and how to do things from ideas you explore from reading books.

Learning is the acquisition of knowledge. So, without reading any books, you can hardly acquire knowledge. Especially in this present-day world where the new precious commodity is knowledge and information processed and transformed into valuable data, the new oil driving most business processes with AI tech tools and applications for automation and machine learning. So, basic literacy skills are necessary for developing a culture of reading and gaining knowledge for processing information and data in the present-day digital economy.