September the 8th is International Literacy Day. It shouldn’t take much reflection to understand how important literacy (regardless of the language) is. Illiteracy can be an impediment to: communication (text messages, etc); civic participation (voting, etc); healthcare (understanding prescriptions, etc); accessing services (information posters, etc); travel (sign posts, departure boards, etc); work (keeping records, communicating with clients, etc); safeguarding your rights (contracts, etc); and, of course, education (where formally in school or elsewhere). You can probably also think of lots of other things too. Of course, someone who is illiterate can lead a very full and successful life – being illiterate doesn’t mean being stupid or ill-informed or incompetent, of course it doesn’t. But very many things are very much harder without it.
In 2016 I was lucky enough to be in Rwanda and working with Azizi Life (https://www.azizilife.com/open-the-door-to-literacy-floridas-story-and-yours/). At the time, they were starting to plan and implement their Adult Literacy program. This uses a curriculum and teaching materials provided by the Rwandan Government to teach Rwandan adults to read and write in Kinyarwanda. I helped to train the trainers and the first batch of teachers for the program. I don’t speak Kinyarwanda, but I prepared a host of materials in English that the three wonderful trainers translated into Kinyarwanda. We looked at a lot of good teaching practice – differentiation, team teaching, assessment, games and activities, differentiation, etc.
I went back in 2023 and revisited the program and the teachers (some of whom were part of the initial cohort of teachers) and I was so thrilled to see how much the program has developed since my early involvement. The trainers and teachers have done incredible work on sharing best practice and collaborating with each other to make the program more effective and more relevant to the groups they work with. We even ran a workshop for local education officers to explain to them some of the amazing work that these teachers and trainers are doing.
Since 2016, Azizi Life has trained 7,339 adults to read and write across 7 rural centres and 1 prison. There is still a lot more work to be done, in Rwanda and elsewhere. According to the UN (https://www.unesco.org/en/days/literacy) in 2024 there were still at least 739 million youth and adults worldwide who lack basic literacy skills.
My involvement was tiny but I am very proud of the contribution I made, and I am so excited to see the work of Azizi Life continuing.
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