Mission Statement

The mission of The Women’s Literacy Foundation is to bring the joy of reading and the power of knowledge to women and men around the world through innovative entertainment-based teaching methods.

The Global Adult Literacy Problem

The definition of literacy and thereby the measurement of illiteracy varies greatly between countries and cultures. However, the World Factbook produced by the United States Government estimates that approximately 18% of the world’s adult population is illiterate.

• Over two thirds of the world’s 800 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
• There are twice as many illiterate adult women in the world than illiterate adult men. In China, three of every four illiterate adults are women.
• Extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, South and West Asia, the Arab states, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where around one-third of the men and half of all women are illiterate.
• In the past fifty years, the number of illiterate adults worldwide has remained virtually unchanged at 800 million.

The Literacy Dilemma

On the average, a child with illiterate parents is approximately six times more likely to become an illiterate adult than a child with literate parents. To this extent, illiteracy is a hereditary handicap passed culturally from parents to children. However, the converse is also true: Teach a parent the joy and value of reading and that gift will be handed down to generations of offspring.

When literacy results are reported as a percentage of population, it appears huge progress has been made in the fight against adult illiteracy. However, it is not the number of illiterate adults which is getting smaller; it is simply that the educated population of the world is getting bigger and leaving the same disenfranchised segment of the population further behind with each generation.

The fight against illiteracy hinges on one key question:

How do you persuade a person to work many many hours learning a skill which they and their parents and grandparents generally believe they do not need?

The answer is really quite simple: Make learning fun, convenient, and free.

Operational Methodology

If a school is at the top of a mountain, some people will climb the mountain every day to learn, but most will not.

If you put the school at the beach and serve ice cream every day, you may not get every potential student to attend, but you will get more students than the school at the top of a mountain.

The teaching methodology planned by The Women’s Literacy Foundation is based upon making the adult literacy learning process embody four principles:

1. Offer the learning opportunity at a convenient time.
2. Offer the learning in a convenient location and comfortable environment.
3. Make the learning experience FUN and have true entertainment value.
4. Make learning free.

Our plan to achieve these goals is to use American movies and television shows as teaching tools. The dialogue will be dubbed into the local language and over-sized scrolling-format subtitles in the local language will be added.

Using Chinese as an example, the first set of five shows or movies will teach ten Chinese characters. The beginning of each show will include a five minute lesson on the sounds created by each character and examples of some words which use it. After each show will be another five minute lesson on how to draw each character. During the show, every time one of these characters is used, it is highlighted in the subtitles and the audio dialogue volume is briefly increased to emphasize the character.

The “student” may come to a comfortable tea house which is heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer, sit in a comfortable chair (not a student desk), drink some tea, and watch a TV show or movie at any time convenient to them… for free.

After the “student” has watched the first five shows or movies, they must pass a simple quiz on the computer demonstrating that they are able to recognize and write those first ten characters. When they have passed that quiz, they may watch another five shows or movies which will teach ten or fifteen new characters. This process will continue until they have learned to read and write the 1500 characters determined by the Chinese government to be the benchmark of “literacy” for Chinese.

Our goal is to first establish a series of tea houses in China which will offer this entertainment-based method of teaching. We are also looking at kiosk-style systems which could be installed in existing private tea houses to offer an automated teaching mechanism in villages all over China.

After we have demonstrated the success of this teaching method in China we intend to duplicate these activities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, across the Sub-Sahara and into Africa.

We can defeat adult illiteracy one family at a time.