Literacy Has Amazing Power

Literacy is all about stories: the ones we share, the ones we live, and the ones that shape us.  

Last year I met Dr. Worku Mulat. He has a powerful story. His mother never got the chance to learn to read. She wanted better for her kids; Dr. Mulat is her eldest. She insisted they all learn to read. And in his words, “I couldn’t stop there” and he went on to receive his PhD in Ecology. He is also the author of one of Open Hearts Big Dreams (OHBD - an NGO I founded) most popular books, The Boy Who Did Not Give Up, about the legend of St. Yared. This was a story his mother told him as a child, and he dedicated this book back to her. Now her story and her hopes for her kids are inspiring many others in Ethiopia and around the globe.

OHBD story started with a photo of a wide eye child who would put our whole family and community on a different path. Our youngest child discovered the inequity in opportunity around the world early and wasn’t having it. OHBD focuses on creating Literacy, Art, Technology and Leadership opportunities for K-12 kids in effort to close that gap. 

Literacy has amazing power. Literacy is a gate that unlocks education. Without it, so many doors are closed. But what is needed to make that possible. We believe it requires four things: 

1. Books. Stories with pictures are the most powerful for kids. Engaging, culturally appropriate stories captured and colorfully brought to life with talented writers and illustrators. This is the story of Jane Kurtz who wanted to use her writing talents to give back to the country she grew up in during her early years. Her vision led to our main literacy project, Ready Set Go books.
2. Innovation. We need to experiment with new approaches when nothing else has been successful. This led to us start Ready Set Go books since previous efforts weren’t increasing literacy overall. And led us to experiment with new Innovation Center efforts throughout the course of 2019. Dr. Worku and his brothers, Yirga and Lakw both Microsoft engineers, have led this effort.
3. Collaboration. There is an African proverb that says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We want BOTH. I learned at Amazon the power of adding AND where you see an OR. To accomplish AND here, we needed the fourth element below.
4. Bold Goals. These need to take a long view and be supported by a global community. Our goals are 1) to increase the literacy rate of a country through creating the missing early reader books and getting them to kids all over the country and 2) to increase innovation by trying new approaches, running experiments and showing what is possible. 

We made good progress since we started in 2017. We funded two New Model Programs – Read to Mom with MDC in Maji and Innovative Teaching Methods with Project Ethiopia in Dangla. We created many more RSG books, over 85 in total so far; titles are now in Amharic and Tigrinya and most also are in Afaan Oromo. We are in public libraries in Washington, California, Colorado and Minneapolis. Forty seven of our titles were submitted for review and approved by the Ministry of Education and Head of Curriculum in Ethiopia. We have to date distributed over 110K RSG books in Ethiopia in five Ethiopian languages. We are making plans with collaborators to add another 100K in 2020. We are gaining more local content creators and piloted both our first art day in Adama and writer’s workshop in Addis. Our first leg of the innovation center project, the Gondar community library is almost completely build, we funded the building of a science lab for an innovative teacher, and we successfully tested STEM train the trainer and a peer to peer (US to Ethiopia) mentoring platform in Bahir Dar and Jimma.  

In 2020 and beyond, we will continue to focus on literacy and innovation through Ready Set Go book creation and distribution, completing the Model Gondar library and Dangla Science Lab, publishing Ready Set Go STEM teaching aids for rural teachers, expanding our STEM training efforts, and funding more Model Programs.

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life n modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development…For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right…Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” ~ Kofi Annan

Thanks to so many for your generous support in bringing the power of reading and innovation to many more kids in Ethiopia. What has worked for us here applies to many other complex challenges and we would love to hear what challenges you are taking on to make the world a bit more equal.

A version of this post was previously published in the Open Hearts Big Dreams Newsletter: https://openheartsbigdreams.org/what-we-do/newsletter/ You can sign up to receive here: https://eepurl.com/c8zhuX

I also write for Working Mother, Mom, Mayhem, Missions and More, Adoptive Families Circle, Melting Pot Family, and my personal blogs: Balancing Motherhood and Career and Ethiopian Ties. You can also find me on Twitter ellenorea and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ellenore_angelidis/