African Literacy Pilot Project
Donation protected
A. The Killing and Insanity Must Stop:
Please help us make a difference in one of the most challenging regions of the planet, including the nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone, West Africa.
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 is a region notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 years old reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015).
As the region has struggled to recover from these insane slaughters, Ebola hit and, largely due to illiteracy, ran 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, Ebola forced the indefinite closure of Liberia’s schools, nationwide, for the better part of a year.
This wasn’t just an “African problem.” The Ebola disaster spilled out 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.
Illiteracy is the most destructive human rights violation as it makes possible the repeated violations of the remainder of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration’s 30 articles.
B. The Wrong Thing to Do is Nothing
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 a Pasadena, California lawyer. I have worked since 2005 with an amazing group of courageous and inspired West African youth leaders to create the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign (Campaign) for Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) . We have activated thousands of youth of the region as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed. See, Breaking the Fever , our short film below.
Please help us build on this decade of work by making possible our pilot literacy education training project in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa over two weeks in late March, early April, 2016.
We are now partnering 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 .”
With your help, we will:
• Introduce Study Tech to Liberian government and civil society leaders, creating the lines and commitments necessary to build long-term, sustainable literacy education through the country and region;
• Hold a national conference of educators and policy makers for the same purpose;
• Run an inaugural three-day Study Tech-based teacher/youth community leader “train the trainers” workshop, to utilize the successful seminar-style curriculum APS developed over two-plus years in Lagos, Nigeria (circa 2003-2005).
C. The Dream
We want to build on these actions to create and sustain long-term literacy education teacher and student training throughout Liberia, Sierra Leone and neighboring countries. Our dream is to enable establishment of national and regional literacy education training centers throughout the region.
Thank you so much for your support.
Tim Bowles
Pasadena, California
Volunteer
Youth for Human Rights International
Please help us make a difference in one of the most challenging regions of the planet, including the nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone, West Africa.
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 is a region notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 years old reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015).
As the region has struggled to recover from these insane slaughters, Ebola hit and, largely due to illiteracy, ran 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, Ebola forced the indefinite closure of Liberia’s schools, nationwide, for the better part of a year.
This wasn’t just an “African problem.” The Ebola disaster spilled out 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.
Illiteracy is the most destructive human rights violation as it makes possible the repeated violations of the remainder of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration’s 30 articles.
B. The Wrong Thing to Do is Nothing
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 a Pasadena, California lawyer. I have worked since 2005 with an amazing group of courageous and inspired West African youth leaders to create the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign (Campaign) for Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) . We have activated thousands of youth of the region as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed. See, Breaking the Fever , our short film below.
Please help us build on this decade of work by making possible our pilot literacy education training project in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa over two weeks in late March, early April, 2016.
We are now partnering 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 .”
With your help, we will:
• Introduce Study Tech to Liberian government and civil society leaders, creating the lines and commitments necessary to build long-term, sustainable literacy education through the country and region;
• Hold a national conference of educators and policy makers for the same purpose;
• Run an inaugural three-day Study Tech-based teacher/youth community leader “train the trainers” workshop, to utilize the successful seminar-style curriculum APS developed over two-plus years in Lagos, Nigeria (circa 2003-2005).
C. The Dream
We want to build on these actions to create and sustain long-term literacy education teacher and student training throughout Liberia, Sierra Leone and neighboring countries. Our dream is to enable establishment of national and regional literacy education training centers throughout the region.
Thank you so much for your support.
Tim Bowles
Pasadena, California
Volunteer
Youth for Human Rights International
Organizer
Tim Bowles
Organizer
Pasadena, CA