Literacy Program News – Women’s Education Partnership
Above, literacy participants from our circles in Hajj Yousif Baraka attending training on local health issues led recently by Hasan Martin, from The Red Crescent; right our expert literacy consultant, Mrs Adila Osman and below her, our new Assistant Literacy Project Coordinator, Mrs Aisha Abdelrahman Al-Sadiq.
We are very proud to welcome Aisha to Women’s Education Partnership. In addition to her substantial experience in delivering literacy and women’s education programmes, Aisha’s other skills and interests dovetail perfectly with the creative, community driven, income-generating skills approach we apply to our literacy courses. Aisha told us ” My hobbies are singing, writing poetry and composing. I am interested in everything that would develop society as a whole and the development of women in particular. I am happy to be part of the WEP team because I love working with women and am committed to women’s education and developing their skills. I really look forward to contributing in this field with the knowledge and skills I have. I am a designer of handmade accessories too and so am able to train women in this field. I am also looking forward to acquiring new skills.” Aisha is married and has two young children.
Below, scenes from our literacy celebration in December last year.
We are excited that Aisha will be working under the expert guidance of Adila to consolidate our literacy programme this year as well as exploring new directions to expand and deepen our outreach.
Below, Adila addressing our literacy celebration, held in December last year.
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Our Plans for 2023
Last year saw greatly increased demand for literacy training. Adila explains; “previously we had to make great efforts to attract women to our courses as so many women weren’t free to attend – having to work in domestic labour. We found numbers attending our women’s literacy circles soared last year, with some circles registering as many as 60 participants, well above the 25 average of previous years. Given the intense demand, we plan to focus our resources on opening more circles in these communities. We also aim to open bridging centres for our literacy graduates. These will enable our literacy graduates to take their newfound knowledge and skills further by helping them gain further education certificates and vocational training. This is part of what we see as an integrated, long-term, multi-staged community development program”
We currently operate five circles in Dar as-Salam, for example, and we see the potential here to extend the resources available to our literacy participants by incorporating such women’s community assets as a small library, chat room, theatre, cookery centre and nursery for plants and vegetables. In this way, we can grow the post-course sustainability of our work as these community initiatives will be community led and will be eventually self-funding.
Below, more scenes from our Red Crescent health awareness training session with members of Hajj Yousif Baraka circles,
We also plan to offer more specialist awareness sessions on FGM and early marriage as part of our literacy syllabus, as well as training on safe sanitation and protecting the local environment. This will go hand in hand with strengthening our relationship with local community organizations.
This year we aim to run 17 literacy circles , all with income-generation training incorporated, update and adapt our REFLECT literacy training manual, offer literacy facilitators’ refresher training courses, establish five bridging centres and explore the possibility of establishing women’s cooperatives.
We will be working hard over the coming months to secure the funding we need to make these vital initiatives happen. We are so grateful for every donation made. You can help us make this year’s literacy program happen.
Just click on the link below to donate. Every donation makes a huge difference.
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This is a literacy post for Women’s Education Partnership
Learn more about our women’s literacy, orphans schooling and university scholarship projects programmes below:
Opening Doors – Our Women’s Literacy Programme
Our University Scholarships – giving bright young women the chance to go to university
Scenes from Our Orphans’ Schooling Programme and From Hardship to Hope Our Orphans Schooling Programme
Women's literacy in Sudan 