Friends of Liberia is proud to celebrate International Literacy Day with our partners: WE-CARE Foundation, HIPPY-International and The Rotary Club of Indianapolis. Thanks to a wonderful grant from the Rotary Club of Indianapolis, WE-CARE was able to have three children’s books contextualized for use with families enrolled in their Family Literacy Initiative.
The books include: Is Your Mama A Donkey?, Blamo and the Okra Soup, and Animal Day at School. What does contextualize mean, you ask? According to contextual learning theory, learning occurs only when students process new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them in their own frames of reference. For Liberian youngsters this means putting the stories into pictures and situations that they are familiar with.
The Family Literacy Initiative addresses a crisis that underlies all of Liberia’s challenges — one of the lowest literacy rates in Africa. Schools closing for most of 2014 during the Ebola crisis exacerbated the existing serious problem. This project takes a family approach to literacy. It recognizes that parents are a child’s first teacher.
Friends of Liberia partnered with the international evidence-based program, Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY – International), to bring this program to Liberia. Our other partner is the WE-CARE Foundation in Monrovia. As a respected Liberian not-for-profit organization that publishes supplemental reading materials and trains teachers, WE-CARE is the implementing Liberian partner for the program.
Together with HIPPY-International and WE-CARE, we are committed to a program that will:
(1) increase parents’ literacy levels along with their children’s, and
(2) have a lasting and sustainable two-generation impact.
Thank you to the Rotary Club of Indianapolis for helping literacy in Liberia!