Global Literacy Matters

ProLiteracy staff has had one action-packed week in Latin America! I (Alesha Anderson, ProLiteracy’s international program officer) arrived in El Salvador to visit village banks and see how clients had been able to improve their businesses since ProLiteracy’s training event in June 2010. Once Lynn Curtis, ProLiteracy senior advisor, and Dean Curtis, of Interweave Solutions arrived, we immediately launched refresher training for field officers of new village banks. The training went very well! Loan officers at 18 banks are motivated to go forward with planned community instruction and community action projects. FINCA, a global microfinance organization, has recently hired 40 new individual loan officers who had no training or awareness of our project. We were able to work with individual loan officers and create a plan for them to use ProLiteracy’s literacy and micro finance training to work individually with each of their clients. Each individual loan officer will gather groups of ...

ProLiteracy in El Salvador, June 2010 Dean Curtis, Founder of Interweave Solutions, did an in-depth training that he calls the 6Ps of Business (Plan, Product, Process, Promotion, Price, and Paperwork). The information targets ways participants canimprove their businesses, and they dove right into creating growth plans for their businesses, home life/family, and community. Most had run their own businesses, but they didn't exactly know where they stood with capital or how they would apply their FINCA loan to actually grow the business. Now they know! Our visits to village banks gave us the chance to meet women who face poverty, gang violence, and lack of education every day. They shared their goals and what they want to learn together (sewing and baking cakes) and started making plans on how they could open a learning center for the community. Another community, Distrito de Italia, faces similar problems with gang violence. Many people in the community live in fear. Crime in El Salv...

International Literacy Day El Salvador ALFALIT ProLiteracy’s partner ALFALIT provides literacy instruction that focuses on economic self-sufficiency to residents of urban and rural villages that were devastated during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war and recent earthquakes. Through instruction, group discussions, and action projects, participants gain the reading, writing, math, and organizational skills necessary to launch and sustain enterprises such as small stores, vegetable and fruit gardens and dairy and livestock cooperatives. By donating to ProLiteracy right now, you will help these women and men receive the tools necessary to learn and prosper such as start up grants for micro-enterprise, as well as notebooks, pens and primers for literacy classes. Our goal is to raise just $220 a day as we countdown to International Literacy Day on September 8, 2009. Help us help them through strengthening the power of literacy with your gift towards our goal. Together we can do so much!