If you liked Dumb Ways To Die, you may also like this one. That’s not a put-down. FCB Inferno has created a macabre animated PSA and song with serious effectiveness potential. The ad was created with illustration by Wilfrid Wood for publishing and education company, Pearson’s Project Literacy, with the aim of drawing awareness to global illiteracy.

Project Literacy is a global campaign supported by 40 charities and educational organisations whose target is that by 2030 no newborn child will face a life of poor literacy.

One in 10 people in the world can’t read. According to the UN, 781 people aged 15 or over are illiterate and nearly 2/3 of illiterate adults are women.

That matters because illiteracy is implicated in world problems such as child marriage, female genital mutilation, overdoses, AIDS, drug abuse, homelessness and infant mortality.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics around 3.7% (620,000) of Australians aged 15 to 74 years have literacy skills at Below Level 1, a further 10% (1.7 million) at Level 1. Level 1 is defined as being able to read and understand simple paragraphs, write simple letters and count and recognise figures 1-1,000.

The campaign was launched to coincide with the address by actress and global ambassador of Project Literacy, Lily Cole, to British MPs in February to tackle the problem.

Last year, the World Literacy Foundation assessed the cost of illiteracy to the global economy at US$1.2tn.

Project Literacy has launched a petition urging action on illiteracy and this will be presented to the UN in New York on International Literacy Day on  September 8.

Dan Wagner, Unesco’s chair in learning and literacy at the University of Pennsylvania, commented, “Literacy is a key component in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals. Without literacy, each of the 17 goals will be limited by the inability of citizens to be sufficiently informed on key issues, and less empowered to take action,” said Dan Wagner, Unesco’s chair in learning and literacy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cole added, “When we have these different global issues we take a Band-Aid approach – how can we fix this problem? – rather than investing time and energy looking at why these problems exist … so we can start to solve the root problems of these issues. If we don’t solve the root problems, we’re just dealing with different symptoms again and again.

“If you empower people to have more control of their lives they will deal with these problems. It’s about empowerment, fundamentally.”