Somia Yaqoob, 4, hopes to go to school next year but the prospects are not good in her village outside of Lahore.

There are so many illiterate people in Pakistan, many businesses use symbols to advertise their wares. A woman looks for help in the dentistry district of Peshawar, Pakistan.

In Dhalloki, a small village outside Lahore, Pakistan, Sharifan Arif, 30 has five children who go to school. She walks to her class at the Dhalloki Adult Literacy Center.

Women listen intently durning class at a reading center in Karachi, Pakistan. Many schools offer classes to illiterate woman so they bring their learning home. National Commission for Human Development has started 108,000 adult literacy centers in Pakistan since 2002 and have taught 2.6 million women to read. Their yearly goal is to start 100,000 centers each year and teach 2.5 million women to read.

A girl writes in her notebook at a girls school in Islamabad. A grown woman without an education is like a young woman without a dowry: socially handicapped, with limited options. This is especially true in countries -- like Pakistan -- where the poverty and corruption have severely limited government services.

Insa Azad, 30, holds her baby, Saif, in her arms while her son Samar, 4, looks over the counter while she sells candy to a young customer at her shop. Insa learned to read and do simple figures a few months ago at an adult literacy center and gained the skills she needed to open a little store next to her home in Islamabad.

Girl's families pay 20-30 Rupees per child per month to attend the Higher Secondary School in the Kashmir town of Gundi Piran in the Patika District. They need text books for 6-10 subjects at a cost of 500-600 Rupees per month. The younger students hold class in the open air, often relying on a campfire for warmth.

Educational groups have seen the shortcomings of public schools, and many have taken giant steps to address them. The Central Asia Institute, for example, has set up the Higher Secondary School in the Kashmir town of Gundi Piran in the Patika District. The schools are bare-bones, but the institute -- financed, in part, by sales of the book "Three Cups of Tea" by founder Greg Mortenson, allows girls as young as five have room to run around, eat nutritious lunches and learn English, Islamic studies, science, math and the home arts. High school girls read from their books and have dreams of becoming doctors and teachers.

Master teacher trainer Qudsia Talat greets neighborhood ladies and hopefully future students in a poor area of Karachi, Pakistan. A country of intense slums, crushing poverty and sometimes oppressive faith, Pakistan is handicapped by an educational system that even former government ministers don't energetically defend.

National Commission for Human Development has started 108,000 adult literacy centers in Pakistan since 2002 and have taught 2.6 million women to read. Their yearly goal is to start 100,000 centers each year and teach 2.5 million women to read. Women practice reading at an adult literacy center outside Lahore.

National Commission for Human Development has started 108,000 adult literacy centers in Pakistan since 2002 and have taught 2.6 million women to read. Their yearly goal is to start 100,000 centers each year and teach 2.5 million women to read. In a village outside Lahore, Bushra Nazir, 35, has been reading and writing for four or five months and relishes her joy after writing her own name.

Nabeela Abid, 17, learned to read at the Dhalloki Adult Literacy Center in Dhalloki outside of Lahare, Pakistan, and after classes goes home and teaches her father Abid Hussain, 42, how to read.