Education

Literacy - Lifeline to the Future

More than 860 million adults worldwide are illiterate and over 100 million children do not have access to school. Starting in 2003 the United Nations designated the next 10 years as the decade of literacy. Literacy is about more than reading and writing, it is about how we communicate in society. It is about social practices and relationships, about knowledge, language and culture.

Our goals at Care for Life (CFL) are to sponsor educational programs and services designed to empower adults and their families by assisting them to acquire the literacy practices and skills they need to function more effectively in their daily lives and participate in the transformation of their societies.

CFL offers a government-sponsored literacy program made available by the Mozambican Ministry of Education which provides comprehensive literacy instruction and a certificate of achievement. This certificate is the equivalent of a GED and represents completion of high school. This course incorporates skills such as math and health which furnish graduates with a greater skill set and opportunity for a brighter future.

CFL also partners with ProLiteracy Worldwide, a nonprofit international literacy organization based in Syracuse, NY, that was formed by the 2002 merger of Laubach Literacy International and Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc. ProLiteracy Worldwide is now the oldest and largest nongovernmental literacy organization in the world.

Adult learners are improving conditions for their families and their communities through ProLiteracy's grassroots partner programs. ProLiteracy uses its unique methodology to provide training, technical assistance, and targeted local grants to support tailored programs that combine literacy with economic self-reliance, health, education, peace, human rights, and environmental sustainability projects.

In addition to our ProLiteracy program, CFL continues to develop and expand a library that will enable community members to practice and more fully utilize the skills they develop through our literacy program.

Ultimately the aim is to take the overall literacy program further into the community through a means similar to the CFL Community Outreach program. The literacy program will work in tandem with grassroots organizations and is based on principles of participatory education. Through our literacy programs, CFL will empower women and vulnerable members of society to transform their conditions of deprivation into a new reality of self-respect and empowerment.

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