In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On September 8, The Asia Foundation commemorated International Literacy Day
for the first time in Timor-Leste. The Foundation partnered with the Secretary of State for Youth and Sport, Alola Foundation, Care International, and Timor Aid to host a book fair for primary and secondary students.

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I was in my teens in England when I first heard the Afghan author and educator Idries Shah telling tales to his children, family, and friends. He had collected hundreds of these traditional stories from oral and manuscript sources in and around Afghanistan.

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Stories of Vietnam’s rapid development make headlines in local and international media regularly these days. In 1985, the average per-capita income in Vietnam was $130, making it one of the five poorest countries in the world. Now, with average incomes over $1,000, Vietnam’s highly literate population…

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As the world celebrates International Literacy Day on September 8, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia officer in Nepal, Shameera Shrestha, caught up with the director of the American Library at the U.S. Embassy of Kathmandu, Prakash Thapa, on where he sees the future of Nepal’s library system…

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When Ireneo O. Pinzon and his family moved in the 1960s to Isulan, a rural town in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines, not a single library existed. Even 50 years later, the Southern Philippines continues to lag behind the more urban islands to the north.

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In recent years, Afghanistan’s battered education system has seen some progress – including more schools for boys and girls, and better access to critical resources such as books and classroom equipment. Yet, the nation’s literacy rate still remains one of the lowest in the world estimated at 27 percent. To help Afghanistan address this ongoing challenge…

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Vietnam has just finished its university entrance exam season, with nearly 2 million applicants vying for a coveted spot in some 400 universities and colleges. The competition is fierce; only about one-third of them will be successful. Given the country’s strong traditional dedication to learning, the intense desire by Vietnamese parents to ensure that their children will have more opportunities than they had and will be able to compete in a more globalized world is driving the educational pressure even higher. The legacy of a socialist, polytechnic education system in Vietnam means that students are channeled early into specialized academic areas…

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On a recent trip to Sri Lanka, I traveled by car from Colombo to Jaffna, a journey of more than 10 hours, and I discovered a city that seemed quietly determined to move forward. Two years after the devastating civil war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tigers ended…

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A year ago, the Leuwiranji Elementary School in West Java was falling down. Located in a remote corner of the district of Bogor, the school’s 177 students come from poor families who are mostly employed in the sand-and-rock harvesting business that supplies a booming construction industry in Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta.

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The Malaysian state of Sabah on the northern point of Borneo, though resource-rich, has the highest poverty rate in the country. Official figures claim 16 percent, but unofficial sources put the poverty rate as high as 24 percent. Interestingly, the face of the poor in Sabah is quite unlike that of the rest of Malaysia. [...]

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