Literacy for Adults: Reading the World (Mexico)

Dear Lovers of Literacy,

Atzin's new literacy modules called Tihueliske We can! help people learn to read and write.Developed especially for women, the eight modules combine literacy with ideas about personal development, human rights and equality.Each module of Tihueliske We can! focuses on a specific human right, such as the right to education or the right to security and peace. On completion of the eight literacy modules, learners will be able to: read and understand words, sentences and simple texts; sign their full names; write a short paragraph; and write numbers up to 100 and solve basic addition and subtraction problems.

The Atzin team and village educators followed a multi-step participatory process to achieve an effective design for the eight modules. The steps included:

• Meetings that identified education of women as a program priority as well as the need for new approach to teaching and learning;
• Work with twenty women to identify the 120 most commonly used words and the selection of keywords;
• A search for best-of literature on human rights and gender as well as other literacy curricula from Mexico and other countries;
• Organization of an integrated literacy curriculum of eight modules with cross-cutting incorporation of ideas about human rights, equality and gender, and personal development;
• Production of an alphabet with appropriate images and words for adults;
• Production of each module, including selection of readings, stories, practice exercises and drawings;
• Review of each module line by line by the Atzin team and educators, with revisions;
• Training of educators on use of the modules;
• And finally, organization of three groups of women to pilot test the contents of each module and evaluate each person's progress in learning.

Early results are promising! Stay tuned for our next progress report on the experiences of individual women as they discuss their advances.

As always, Susan