African Literacy Campaign 2022 and Beyond

Now in our 17th year of collaboration and despite all barriers -- the global pandemic being only the latest -- we core members of the African Literacy Campaign rededicate ourselves to creating and sustaining our Study-Tech based literacy initiative throughout West Africa through the establishment of national and regional literacy education teacher training centers.

The initiative continues with our return to Liberia and Ghana October 24 – November 5, 2022 to deliver introductory seminars and workshops, thus extending our coalition building critical to long-range viability and success.

Over recent decades, West Africa has been one of the most challenging regions of the planet.

Illiteracy fueled the hatred, fear, and bloodthirsty revenge that marked Liberia’s coup d’etat in 1979-80 , its 14 years of genocidal civil war between 1989 – 2003 and the 11 years of similarly savage conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone (1991 – 2002). This region is notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 are reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015).

As the region struggled to recover from these insane slaughters, Ebola hit and ran largely out of control, for most of 2014 and into 2015, with more than 22,400 cases and more than 8,900 deaths to the disease. Among other devastating effects, the disease forced the indefinite closure of Liberia’s schools nationwide for the better part of a year.

The Ebola disaster spilled into the West in late 2014, with two persons dying of the disease in the U.S., accompanied by media hysteria and growing public panic.

As horrible as that was for West Africa, it was a relative ripple alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively cutting off nations from nations and continents from continents and disrupting the ability of nations such as Liberia and Sierra Leone from orderly education of its young populations.

The struggles of such countries are stark demonstration of illiteracy as the most destructive human rights violation. It makes possible violations of the remainder of the 30 articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

B. Actions

These humanitarian disasters must be a wake-up call to all but those terminally deaf and blind to the world’s sufferings. Effective action is not a luxury here. It is required.

I am Pasadena, California lawyer. Along with many courageous and inspired West African youth leaders, I created the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign for Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) in 2006, activating thousands of youth of the region as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed.

Now focusing on UDHR Article 26 of the UDHR, we have partnered since 2016 with Applied Scholastics International (APS), an organization uniquely qualified to offer the solution to illiteracy through the proven effective learning methods of American author and innovator L. Ron Hubbard, widely known as “Study Technology ” or “Study Tech.”

After our successful coalition-building trip in July, our 2022 phase continues with vital steps to build a sustainable initiative for true competency-based education in one of the most challenging regions of our world today. With your help:

• In Liberia, we will be delivering a two-day Study Technology symposium to an expected 100 professors and instructors at one of the leading universities in the country; and

• In Ghana, we will deliver a one-day seminar to national policymakers in Accra and, in Central Region, the two-day symposium to leading educators.

C. The Dream

Only through an effective literacy education movement -- equipping the emerging generations with competent, courageous leadership -- can West Africa emerge from the wars, corruptions and other disasters that have plagued the region for too long. We aim to contribute in ways that can make a genuine difference toward this worthy and vital end.

Thank you so much for your support.