Teach Somebody (to Read and Write)!

September 8th is International Literacy Day. Here are some statistics from UNESCO's site at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/dakar/education/literacy/

·       "Learning to read and write is a fundamental right. Yet, 38 % of African adults (some 153 millions) are illiterate, two-thirds of these are women.

·       Africa is the only continent where more than half of parents are not able to help their children with homework due to illiteracy.

·       Adult literacy rates are below 50% in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

·       Only 1 % of national education budget of most African governments is earmarked to address the issue of literacy.

·       The situation is alarming as literacy is a crucial step to acquire the basic skills needed to cope with the many challenges children, youth and adults will face throughout their lives.

·       For many disadvantaged young people and adults, non-formal education is one of the main routes to learning. Non-formal education reaches people in their own context and ideally in their own local language."

SELI encourages mother-tongue literacy in Sierra Leone through its Heritage Writers program. We offer five writing lessons to formally-educated native speakers, and then try to move them toward authoring books in their own languages. Literacy isn't very useful if, once you achieve it, you can't find anything interesting to read. If you are not already teaching somebody to read and write, please support Heritage Writers by clicking on the DONATE button here!