WConstantin I. Dobrescu, better known as Dobrescu-Argeș, was a Romanian peasant activist and politician, also active as a teacher, journalist, and jurist. Active from his native Mușătești, in Argeș County, he established a regional, and finally national, base for agrarian politics. He is considered Romania's second agrarianist, after Ion Ionescu de la Brad, and, with Dincă Schileru, a revivalist of the peasant cause in the Romanian Kingdom era. Dobrescu was notoriously unpersuaded by agrarian socialism, preferring a mixture of communalism and Romanian nationalism, with some echoes of conservatism. Thus, he stopped short of advocating land reform, focusing his battles on democratization through universal suffrage, and on obtaining state support for the cooperative movement. He himself founded some of the Kingdom's first cooperatives, also setting up model schools, the first rural theater, and the first village printing press—which put out his various periodicals.
WMargaret Crittendon Douglass was a Southern white woman who served one month in jail in 1854 for teaching free black children to read in Norfolk, Virginia. Refusing to hire a defense attorney, she defended herself in court and later published a book about her experiences. The case drew public attention to the highly restrictive laws against black literacy in the pre-Civil War American South.
WEric Eldred is an American literacy advocate and the proprietor of the unincorporated Eldritch Press.
WAlecu Filipescu-Vulpea, also known as Aleco Filipescul, Alecsandru R. Filipescu or Alexandru Răducanu Filipescu, was a Wallachian administrator and high-ranking boyar, who played an important part in the politics of the late Phanariote era and of the Regulamentul Organic regime. Beginning in the 1810s, he took an anti-Phanariote stand, conspiring alongside the National Party and the Filiki Eteria to institute new constitutional norms. Clashing with the National Party over the distribution of spoils, and only obtaining relatively minor positions in the administration of Bucharest, Filipescu eventually joined a clique of boyars that cooperated closely with the Russian Empire. His conditional support for the Eterists played out during the Wallachian uprising of 1821, when Vulpea manipulated all sides against each other, ensuring safety for the boyars. He returned to prominence under Prince Grigore IV Ghica, but sabotaged the monarch's political reform effort and also seduced his wife Maria. She was probably the mother of his only son, Ioan Alecu Filipescu-Vulpache.
WTara Dawn Holland is an American beauty pageant contestant, who was Miss America 1997.
WIoan Lazăr Kalinderu was a Wallachian, later Romanian jurist and confidant of King Carol I, who served for thirty years as the administrator of crown domains, and for three years as president of the Romanian Academy. Educated in France, he was the son of a rich and influential Greek-Romanian banker, Lazăr Kalenderoglu, and the brother of physician Nicolae Kalinderu. Like them, he was a sympathizer of the National Liberal Party, with which he debuted in politics in the 1880s.
WAaron Kirunda, is a social entrepreneur and public figure. He is a co-founder and Chief Executive at enjuba where he dedicates his work to empowering people to reach their full potential through education. enjuba runs the National Spelling Bee in Uganda, a catalytic program that reaches millions of pupils in primary schools, helping them improve their literacy, develop 21st century skills. enjuba also publishes children's books and conducts teacher training programs.
WJoanne Larson holds the Michael W. Scandling Professorship at the University of Rochester Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
WLilia Luciano is a television investigative journalist, filmmaker and public speaker. She is currently a national correspondent at CBS News based in Los Angeles. Before moving to Los Angeles, she worked as the investigative reporter at ABC 10 in Sacramento and was the chief investigative correspondent on Discovery Channel's Border Live.
WGreg Mortenson is an American professional speaker, writer, veteran, and former mountaineer. He is a co-founder and former executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute and the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace.
WProf. Olubayi Olubayi (born November 11, 1960 in Kenya, raised in Kenya and educated at Rutgers University in the United States. He is the Chief Academic officer at Maarifa Education, he was the Vice Chancellor/President of the International International University of East Africa in Uganda. He is a scientist and an expert on bacteria, education, learning, leadership and social-entrepreneurship. As a scientist and eclectic scholar, Olubayi earned his Ph.D. on bacteria-and-plant cell interactions at Rutgers University, holds a research patent on the flocculation of bacteria and has published several scholarly articles in microbiology, biotechnology and social science. As an educator he taught at Middlesex College and at Rutgers University for 16 years, and has taught critical thinking in the IUEA MBA program. He has been an advisor and consultant to government officials in Kenya and South Africa, and UNDP on matters of literacy, education, biotechnology, sustainable development and global citizenship. He is an external advisor to Ph.D. students in the Oxford University-Kemri/Wellcome Trust Research Program in Kilifi, Kenya. As a social entrepreneur, Olubayi co-founded the nonprofit Kiwimbi International and the widely respected American nonprofit Global Literacy Project which sets up libraries worldwide and provides global service learning opportunities. As a thinker, he is the author of the book “Education for a Better World” and a ground breaking scholarly exploration of the emerging National-Culture of Kenya.
WDolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actress, author, businesswoman, and humanitarian, known primarily for her work in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly, which led to success during the remainder of the 1960s, before her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records. She has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
WFelicia Pride is an American author, screenwriter, producer, and director. She is the author of six books, including the young adult novel Patterson Heights. Pride has written for the television shows Queen Sugar and Grey's Anatomy. Her 2020 directorial debut tender received the STARZ/Lionsgate Short Film Award at the 2020 BlackStar Film Festival.
WReach Out and Read, Inc. is a US, nonprofit organization that promotes reading. Reach Out and Read envisions a world where every child is read to every day; where parents have daily, meaningful, language-rich interactions with their children.
WCora Wilson Stewart was an American progressive era social reformer and educator who is well known for her work to eliminate adult illiteracy. In 1911, Stewart was the first woman to be elected to the position of the president of the Kentucky Education Association. Stewart opened Moonlight School, first in Rowan County, Kentucky and then across the United States, to educate illiterate adults at night in the schools where children studied during the day.
WStorybook Dads is a non-profit charity in the UK founded by Sharon Berry and first launched in HM Prison Dartmoor in 2003. The charity enables serving prisoners and detainees to record bed time stories which can then be sent home to their children, and aims to maintain connections between serving prisoners and their families. In women's institutions the project operates under the name Storybook Mums.
WVasile Vasilievici Stroescu, also known as Vasile de Stroesco, Basile Stroesco, or Vasile Stroiescu, was a Bessarabian and Romanian politician, landowner, and philanthropist. One of the proponents and sponsors of Romanian nationalism in Russia's Bessarabia Governorate, as well as among the Romanian communities of Austria-Hungary, he was also a champion of self-help and of cooperative farming. He inherited or purchased large estates, progressively dividing them among local peasants, while setting up local schools and churches for their use. An erudite and traveler, he abandoned his career in law to focus on his agricultural projects and cultural activism. For the latter work, he became an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.
WAnn Christine Bell Vilsack is an American literacy advocate and politician. Vilsack is married to former Iowa Governor and United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. She served as the First Lady of Iowa from 1999 until 2007. She was an unsuccessful 2012 Democratic nominee for U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district.
WEsther Walls was an African American librarian and an international advocate for literacy. She is known for her work in the New York Public Library and with the Franklin Book Programs advocating for literacy in developing nations around the world.
WBarry S. Zuckerman is Professor and Chair Emeritus of the Department of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center. He started the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine and Boston City Hospital and was one of 12 founders of the Society of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. He was appointed chair of Pediatrics in 1993 and was asked to be First Medical Director of Boston Medical Center when Boston City Hospital merged with University Hospital. He is a co-founder of Reach Out and Read, a national childhood literacy program in the United States, founder of Medical-Legal Partnership, and co-founder of Health Leads, Healthy Steps, and the Nutrition & Fitness for Life pediatric obesity program, all of which have transformed pediatric care for low-income families. Most recently, along with colleagues, he developed a free app for pediatric primary care called "Small Moments, Big Impact" to promote the mother-infant relationship and emotional well-being for low-income mothers from birth through the first six months of their baby's life.