International Literacy Day ・世界識字の日

On International Literacy Day, September the 8th, 2006 I had the opportunity to attend an adult literacy graduation ceremony in the Ntchisi region. The Ministry of Women and Child Development’s Community Development Department is responsible for this program. It was noted that this particular region has a high illiteracy rate. While Malawi’s overall literacy rate is 60%, only 40% of the people are literate in this region. Approximately 2,000 people have graduated recently from this program.

The Adult Literacy graduation ceremony took place in one of the primary schools in the area. The ceremony consisted of several speeches in the local language Chechewa (which I did not understand unfortunately… ) and other entertainment. It was nice to see some traditional dance, songs and music.

After the ceremony, Helen and I got to interview some graduates. This research was aimed at gaining insight into why students drop out of school in order to understand the complexity of problems that people face. I spoke to about nine people with an assistance of Malawian to interpret. I had a set of questions to find out why they dropped out, what they did afterwards, difficulty of being illiterate, their plan now that they know how to read and write among other things.

It was clear that all the interviewees were very excited as well as felt empowered to improve their lives. They were also pleased to speak to us about their experience. I certainly saw a great success in this program, which provided a valuable opportunity to people to not only to be literate but also to help build their confidence and take control of their life. To read and write, we take it for granted, but it made me think how powerful it can be in some people’s life when they were deprived of this opportunity. I also saw one of the keys to improve the education in the country is to educate the adults, so that they would encourage their children to pursue their education.

I love doing research. I hope I will have an opportunity to conduct some policy related research with my job at Ministry of Education.

The photo is with all the graduates that Helen and I interviewed that day. We had much more people than we asked for. They were fighting to get into the line to be interviewed.