Leaders of Pro-Literacy Detroit and the Liberian Literacy Foundation spoke to dozens of supporters about the importance of literacy amid the brick walls and book spines of the Detroit Public Library on Jan. 31.
The two Detroit-based non-profits announced a coalition that will help provide Liberia, as well as Detroit, with resources to increase reading rates.
Illiteracy is a problem everywhere, said Margaret Williamson, executive director of Pro-Literacy Detroit. She said we all gain something to learn through this program because Detroit also faces a poor literacy rate among youths and adults.
"Many of the things they deal with in Liberia can probably be applicable to Detroit," Williamson said, "…We may find strategies that work in Liberia that will also work right here."
Pro-Literacy Detroit specializes in training literacy tutors and has trained nearly 5,000 since 1984 - 432 of which are still active in metro Detroit. They hope to train 1,200 Liberians as literacy tutors, as well as a handful of American volunteers, which in turn will teach others how to read and write in Liberia.
Williamson said nearly 44 percent of adults in Michigan read at a fourth-grade level or below.
She believes this partnership can benefit literacy efforts in metro Detroit because it will contribute resources and experience to the region's educators. Nor will this coalition slow down Pro-Literacy Detroit's missions to provide domestic literacy education, Williamson said.
"We planned ahead for it," Williamson said. "We have sufficient tutors and workshop leaders."
The 1,200 tutors will be trained over a six-year period.
The Liberian Literacy Foundation, meanwhile, spawned from E. Victor Helb's dream of providing efficient literacy education to Liberia's 3.6 million people, 85 percent of which are illiterate, Helb said.
Helb began writing the foundation's formula nearly two years ago, and has since introduced the Liberian Books Project, which aims to generate funds through the sales of donated college textbooks. Book drives have been set up at nearly 1,200 universities and colleges throughout Michigan and nationwide and a percentage of the funds raised will be donated to the respective regions hosting the drives to support local literacy programs, Williamson said.
He explained his mission and broke it down into four components - raise $30 million dollars by collecting and selling one million donated textbooks, build schools in Liberia's interior and rebuild existing damaged ones, deliver educational resources like books and tutors, and finally, power those schools with wind and solar energy-two abundant resources in Liberia due to its geographical location.
Helb believes education is key to developing an economically stable nation and former Liberian Head of State Wilton Sankawulo endorsed this idea when he spoke at the event. "By educating people you empower them economically," he said. "According to Sankawulo, the greatest obstacle facing this initiative will be rebuilding the country's infrastructure with very little government resources."
Liberia was founded partially by freed individuals from the slave era in the U.S., Helb said, and was heavily influenced by American values and systems of thinking.
"For many reasons, good and bad, we are connected people-and we need your brotherhood," he said, addressing American students in the audience. "Our purpose here tonight centers on the very amazing thing that is happening in actuating this plan-it centers on going from theory to reality…to celebrate human development through the spoken and written word."
Sankawulo wanted to make the point that the goal of literacy is important because everyone wants to learn.
"If learning will pay, they will do it," Sankawulo said. "You have to have determination, you have to long to do it…we need a coordinated plan so that it will succeed."
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