September 8 is World Literacy Day and on today's show, Adrian and Ethan talk about how literacy changes everything.

Education transforms lives and breaks the cycle of poverty that traps so many children.

Literacy is probably the single-most important part of education. Without literacy, all other learning is impossible. A lack of literacy skills holds a person back at every stage of their life. As a child, they will not be able to succeed at school.

In the United States, 34% of children entering kindergarten lack the basic skills needed to learn how to read.

According to the World Literacy Foundation, approximately 260 million children and youth around the world are not in school. 750 million people can’t read a single word and more than 2 billion people struggle to read and write a sentence.