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Uganda

Integrated Intergenerational Literacy Project (IILP)

Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association (URLCODA)

Context

The Integrated Intergenerational Literacy Project (IILP) is an initiative set up by a small number of volunteers who decided to create a community-based organization called the Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association (URLCODA) in 2002 in response to the needs of the rural poor in the Arua district. In 2004, the organization was legally registered by the National NGO Board of Uganda to operate in the districts of Kampala and Arua. Today, it targets the rural poor in general while at the same time focusing specifically on non-literate women and men, HIV-positive people in the community, out-of-school youth, orphans, vulnerable children and primary school pupils with poor literacy skills; hence the intergenerational nature of the programme.

The key problems that URLCODA was designed to address include: high levels of general illiteracy and poverty; a deterioration in the reading and writing skills of pupils in primary schools; limited access to healthcare services in rural areas; the rural communities’ limited ability to promote and maintain their own health; the psycho-social and economic effects of HIV and AIDS on these communities; the plight of orphans and vulnerable children who cannot continue with their education; environmental degradation and declining soil productivity; and food insecurity and malnutrition.

Uganda’s population is estimated at 28,195,754, of whom 30 to 40% of adults are non-literate. The HIV infection rate stands at 6.2%. More than 80% of the population lives in rural areas, and 35 to 38% of the lives below the poverty line. 30 to 38% of children of the poor in rural areas drop out of school. According to a 2005 report on the socio-economic conditions in the Arua district, only 41% of the eligible school-going population aged between 6 and 24 actually attends school, 3% are temporarily out of school, 28% have left school and a further 28% have never attended school. Of the 135,000 children that have dropped out, 68% are girls and 32% boys. Teachers are overwhelmed by the number of pupils per class and most of the children leave the primary education cycle without having acquired basic literacy and numeracy skills. The few adult literacy centres in the rural areas lack both reading materials and trained instructors, preventing them from offering a conducive environment for adult learners. It was in response to this lack that URLCODA’s Integrated Intergenerational Literacy Project was conceived.

Programme

URLCODA decided to embark on empowering the rural communities by equipping them with the literacy skills that they needed to implement livelihood strategies and achieve social and economic transformation. The underlying vision is to foster the development of a “literate, secure, healthy, gender responsive and peaceful society that fosters sustainable grass-roots development”. The major objectives of this “literacy for sustainable local development” approach are to:

• promote the spirit of intergenerational and lifelong learning in the communities by teaching reading and writing skills to non-literate adults, out-of-school youth and schoolchildren who wish to improve their literacy skills;
• link parents, schools, pupils, local leaders, and communities to foster an interest in children’s education, thereby leading to an improvement in children’s learning in schools;
• equip communities with the survival skills needed to overcome their day-to-day challenges such as illiteracy, poverty, family hygiene, agricultural productivity improvement, malnutrition, domestic violence against women, decision making, leadership and environmental conservation;
• provide mother-child health and nutritional education so as to equip mothers with the skill needed to improve both their own health and that of their children;
• prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS and address its socio-economic and psychological consequences by establishing psycho-social support groups and income-generating activities for the infected and affected; and
• provide assistance to HIV and AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children, including girls, in the form of basic school materials that motivate them to remain in school and complete their education.

The approach is to build the literacy skills of, all irrespective of age, so that each member of society contributes meaningfully towards the process of social transformation. This is based on the organization’s core values that include: voluntarism; inclusiveness; cultural heritage; optimism; free social interaction across the board for learning enhancement; and gender responsiveness.

The main focus of the project is the provision of intergenerational literacy education that builds people’s capacities and enables them to respond to the challenges confronting the communities. The main contents emphasise the following:

• Enabling access to community healthcare services in rural areas through health literacy;
• Organizing income-generating activities for poverty eradication;
• Interpreting instructions in medical forms;
• Reducing level of vulnerability among the poor;
• Producing home-made local reading materials; and
• Mobilising communities to collectively tackle problems that affect them.

Various methods are used, including: alphabetic methods; lecture methods; role playing; field and exchange visits that allow different groups to compare notes and learn from one another; public lectures in churches, trading centres and market places; and group discussions on topical issues such as gender-based violence in homes, HIV and AIDS and poverty.

ULCODA depends on its multi-disciplinary team of 24 volunteers to facilitate the intergenerational literacy programme and the activities of the annual community health literacy week. Most of the volunteer instructors are primary school teachers and qualified medical doctors who are working in the various hospitals in the district. Recruitment is currently an issue because the organization does not receive sustained external funding to pay salaries. The volunteers are now developing a concept known as Virtual Rural Community Healthcare Volunteers (VRCHV) to handle the community health literacy week activities. This approach will require only one person to be based at the centre, while the others can be accessed using a variety of ICTs. The volunteers are also working out ways of recruiting and motivating literacy instructors in the nearest future. Other major challenges facing the programme relate to its lack of funds, the negative attitude of some people towards voluntary work, extremely limited reading materials for literacy participants, inadequate transport and a lack of monitoring and evaluation.

URLCODA employs a unique approach to literacy dubbed intergenerational literacy that emphasises both formal literacy and the development of survival skills across all age groups. Other key elements include: the production of local reading materials; a focus on community health and HIV/AIDS; and the organization of income-generating activities for poverty reduction and environmental conservation.

URLCODA’s intergenerational literacy activities, which are aimed at addressing a wide spectrum of problems in an integrated manner, are implemented in collaboration with the relevant government and non-governmental agencies. One such agency is the Uganda Programme for Human and Holistic Development (UPHOLD) that facilitates dialogue and consensus-building between families, communities, teachers and other stakeholders. A useful partnership for the implementation of community health literacy week activities has evolved between the local government in Arua, non-governmental organizations and a missionary hospital, which has proved a cost-effective means of providing health services to a large proportion of the rural poor. Without such an innovation, this would have been impossible.

The volunteer instructor carry out an internal assessment of the programme’s learning outcomes during the community health literacy week and the family sanitation and hygiene competition, one of the activities taking place during this annual event. In future, the URLCODA’s programme will continue to face the challenge of locating and accessing sustainable sources of funding to promote the organization’s activities.

Lessons learned

The impact of URLCODA’s integrated intergenerational literacy project can be seen in the results it has produced among the communities:

• Around 800 intergenerational literacy learners were mobilised in 15 learning centres spread over four sub-counties. At least 450 initially non-literate elderly women are now able to read a few pages of texts written in the vernacular, and understand directions, as well as numbers and words written on sign posts and doors in hospitals and health units.
• URLCODA literacy learners participated in a series of book writers’ workshops that produced the vernacular Beginner Readers’ Book, of which 600 copies were distributed to 15 centres for the learners to practice and retain their reading skills.
• In February 2005, 800 intergenerational literacy learners demanded to sit an assessment test. 600 learners eventually took the test and 570 of them achieved the pass mark required by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development that oversees adult literacy provisions in Uganda.
• 80% of the women participants in the IILP who claimed they were unable to read their children’s end-of-term report cards have reported that they are now able to do so. At least 250 mothers said that they are now able to check their children’s homework.
• More and more women are now able to take an active part in politics and other development activities, with at least 30 of the URLCODA programme’s female participants having won positions in recent Local Council I and II elections.
• Through URLCODA’s literacy project, at least 50 HIV positive people have come forward and a club known as URLCODA HIV/AIDS Club has been formed to help them. This club now has a poultry project to generate income and help meet members’ nutritional needs.
• In the last three years, the community health literacy week has enabled over 40,000 people to receive general health and HIV/AIDS education and over 2,000 people to come forward to take an HIV test. Those who did so attributed their decision to take the test to the free and open interaction that they had experienced during the literacy classes.
• URLCODA now provides guidance and counselling as well as uniforms and other scholastic materials to 664 HIV/AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children in 12 primary schools and 1 vocational school. This has gone a long way towards boosting the morale of HIV positive parents and vulnerable children’s guardians taking part in URLCODA’s literacy project, and has also improved pupil retention in primary schools.
• URLCODA has succeeded in communicating adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention messages to over 10,000 adolescents in four primary schools and one secondary school in one sub-county.

The project has enabled the following lessons to be learned:

• The spirit of voluntarism can help rural and poor communities to access services that would not otherwise have been available to them, and this is something that needs to be promoted, particularly in the case of the young generation.
• Meaningful partnerships and collaboration enable organizations with limited resources to carry out activities that, although essential, no other, priority organization would be in a position to carry out, thereby ensuring that efforts and resources are not duplicated.
• Producing tangible results can transform negative attitudes towards the spirit of voluntarism in community development programmes into positive ones. For instance, this year’s community health literacy week attracted 16 volunteer doctors compared to 3 in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The health week addresses issues of treatment literacy and rational drug use by the rural communities.

Contact

Willy Ngaka
Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association (URLCODA)
P. O. Box 3069
Kampala/Uganda

OR

P. O. Box 1000
Arua/Uganda
wngaka@yahoo.co.uk
urlcoda@yahoo.co.uk