African Literacy Pilot, Phase Two
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A. Our Vital Initiative Continues:
We are going back in the first two weeks of January, 2017 to Liberia, West Africa to further our vital African Literacy initiative. Thanks very much to the many who have helped us create our current foothold. Thank you for all help you can now provide to take this to the next level.
No human rights can be attained without making actual education possible. True education is not rote learning for the next test. Rather, true education equips students with competency and ability to apply what they have studied. Human rights calamities continue to be the reality of this world largely out of the illiteracy of those exploited or impacted.
With over 250 GoFundMe supporters donating over $36,000, we were able to launch this project in March and April of this year, holding highly successful literacy education workshops throughout Liberia and establishing key support from government and civil society leaders. Now, after months of ground work, we are returning to West Africa at the outset of 2017 for the next critical stage: to establish a six-to-eight month “training teacher trainers” pilot in the learning tools of Applied Scholastics International (APS) .
With our intended further success over the first months of 2017, this training pilot will in turn enable sustained, effective and expanding delivery of these literacy tools by skilled West African teachers to fellow educators and, in turn, to students of all levels in one of the most human rights-challenged regions of the world.
B. Why West Africa?:
The horrific effects of long-term illiteracy are not just theoretical in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other West African countries. Illiteracy fueled the hatred, fear, and bloodthirsty revenge that marked Liberia’s coup d’etat in 1979-80, its 14 years of genocidal civil war between 1989 – 2003 and the 11 years of similarly savage conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone (1991 – 2002). This is a region notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 years old reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015) .
As the region struggled to recover from these insane slaughters, Ebola hit and ran largely out of control, for most of 2014 and into 2015, with over 22,400 cases and more than 8,900 deaths to the disease. Among other devastating effects, the epidemic forced the indefinite closure of Liberia’s schools, nationwide, for the better part of a year.
This wasn’t just an “African problem.” The Ebola disaster spilled out into the West in late 2014, with two persons dying of the disease in the U.S., accompanied by media hysteria and growing public panic.
Illiteracy is the most destructive human rights violation as it makes violations of the remainder of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration’s 30 articles possible.
C. Actions
These humanitarian disasters must be a wake-up call to all but those terminally deaf and blind to the world’s sufferings. Effective action is not a luxury here. It is required.
I am a Pasadena, California lawyer. Along with many courageous and inspired West African youth leaders, I created the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign (Campaign) for Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) in 2006, since that time activating thousands of youth of the region as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed. See our short film: From the Ruins: African Human Rights Leadership Campaign .
Please help us continue to build the Campaign’s decade-plus of work by making possible our next trip to West Africa over two weeks in early January, 2017.
The project is a collaboration with Applied Scholastics International (APS) , an organization uniquely qualified to offer the solution to illiteracy through the proven effective learning methods of American author and educator L. Ron Hubbard , widely known as “Study Technology ” or “Study Tech.”
With your help, we will:
• Work with Liberian government and civil society leaders to plan the delivery system – including personnel, venue, curriculum, resources and of course participants -- required to establish a six-to-eight month Study Tech teacher training pilot;
• Select key teacher personnel for travel and training in Study Tech delivery over two-three weeks in early 2017 at the APS campus at Spanish Lake, Missouri, U.S.A.; and
• Through these trained teacher personnel, initiate the “training of Study Tech trainers” pilot over ensuing months in 2017 in Liberia, demonstrating the workability of these vital literacy education tools and thus creating the demand for long-range collaboration and implementation through established educational institutions in the region.
D. The Dream
Building on our successful actions in Liberia earlier this year, this phase two pilot is the vital next step in bringing our dream into reality, the creation of sustainable, long-rang delivery of Study-Tech based literacy education teacher training throughout Liberia, Sierra Leone and the region, including establishment of national and regional literacy education teacher training centers.
Thank you so much for your support.
Tim Bowles
Pasadena, California
Volunteer
Youth for Human Rights International
We are going back in the first two weeks of January, 2017 to Liberia, West Africa to further our vital African Literacy initiative. Thanks very much to the many who have helped us create our current foothold. Thank you for all help you can now provide to take this to the next level.
No human rights can be attained without making actual education possible. True education is not rote learning for the next test. Rather, true education equips students with competency and ability to apply what they have studied. Human rights calamities continue to be the reality of this world largely out of the illiteracy of those exploited or impacted.
With over 250 GoFundMe supporters donating over $36,000, we were able to launch this project in March and April of this year, holding highly successful literacy education workshops throughout Liberia and establishing key support from government and civil society leaders. Now, after months of ground work, we are returning to West Africa at the outset of 2017 for the next critical stage: to establish a six-to-eight month “training teacher trainers” pilot in the learning tools of Applied Scholastics International (APS) .
With our intended further success over the first months of 2017, this training pilot will in turn enable sustained, effective and expanding delivery of these literacy tools by skilled West African teachers to fellow educators and, in turn, to students of all levels in one of the most human rights-challenged regions of the world.
B. Why West Africa?:
The horrific effects of long-term illiteracy are not just theoretical in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other West African countries. Illiteracy fueled the hatred, fear, and bloodthirsty revenge that marked Liberia’s coup d’etat in 1979-80, its 14 years of genocidal civil war between 1989 – 2003 and the 11 years of similarly savage conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone (1991 – 2002). This is a region notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 years old reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015) .
As the region struggled to recover from these insane slaughters, Ebola hit and ran largely out of control, for most of 2014 and into 2015, with over 22,400 cases and more than 8,900 deaths to the disease. Among other devastating effects, the epidemic forced the indefinite closure of Liberia’s schools, nationwide, for the better part of a year.
This wasn’t just an “African problem.” The Ebola disaster spilled out into the West in late 2014, with two persons dying of the disease in the U.S., accompanied by media hysteria and growing public panic.
Illiteracy is the most destructive human rights violation as it makes violations of the remainder of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration’s 30 articles possible.
C. Actions
These humanitarian disasters must be a wake-up call to all but those terminally deaf and blind to the world’s sufferings. Effective action is not a luxury here. It is required.
I am a Pasadena, California lawyer. Along with many courageous and inspired West African youth leaders, I created the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign (Campaign) for Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) in 2006, since that time activating thousands of youth of the region as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed. See our short film: From the Ruins: African Human Rights Leadership Campaign .
Please help us continue to build the Campaign’s decade-plus of work by making possible our next trip to West Africa over two weeks in early January, 2017.
The project is a collaboration with Applied Scholastics International (APS) , an organization uniquely qualified to offer the solution to illiteracy through the proven effective learning methods of American author and educator L. Ron Hubbard , widely known as “Study Technology ” or “Study Tech.”
With your help, we will:
• Work with Liberian government and civil society leaders to plan the delivery system – including personnel, venue, curriculum, resources and of course participants -- required to establish a six-to-eight month Study Tech teacher training pilot;
• Select key teacher personnel for travel and training in Study Tech delivery over two-three weeks in early 2017 at the APS campus at Spanish Lake, Missouri, U.S.A.; and
• Through these trained teacher personnel, initiate the “training of Study Tech trainers” pilot over ensuing months in 2017 in Liberia, demonstrating the workability of these vital literacy education tools and thus creating the demand for long-range collaboration and implementation through established educational institutions in the region.
D. The Dream
Building on our successful actions in Liberia earlier this year, this phase two pilot is the vital next step in bringing our dream into reality, the creation of sustainable, long-rang delivery of Study-Tech based literacy education teacher training throughout Liberia, Sierra Leone and the region, including establishment of national and regional literacy education teacher training centers.
Thank you so much for your support.
Tim Bowles
Pasadena, California
Volunteer
Youth for Human Rights International
Organizer
Tim Bowles
Organizer
Pasadena, CA