Despite its low volume of lending for adult literacy and nonformal education, the World Bank acquired significant project experience in the 1960s and 1970s. Enthusiasm for nonformal education waned in the 1980s; increasing priority was given to help governments to achieve universal primary education as the principal means of making societies literate. The World Bank now supports literacy programs for these reasons: persisting high rates of illiteracy; complimentary claims of adult literacy and primary schooling on public expenditure; and deleterious impact of political and economic turmoil in developing nations on public education management and finance. Projects support a wide range of literacy providers, not just government adult education agencies, usually through a competitive social funding mechanism to encourage competition, experimentation, and replication of best practices. Five general lessons can be drawn from the bank's experience to increase the effectiveness of investments in adult education: literacy instruction is often more successful when combined with teaching practical skills; developing functional literacy may involve teaching basic scientific knowledge and learning a second language; nongovernmental agencies usually require strengthening to become executing agencies for donor projects; documenting effective practices requires systematic development of research capacity; and literacy program impact can be improved with targeting to youths. (Contains 13 references.) (YLB)