‘Smart Skills’ programme to rein in illiteracy

Apr 11, 2018 News

A literacy programme targeting young entrepreneurs and school drop-outs is currently being streamlined. The programme, which is a brainchild of the Ms. Emiley King, of the National Library, is one that will be held in collaboration with the Ministry of Education’s National Centre for Educational Resource Development [NCERD].

Chief Librarian, Ms. Emiley King

During a recent interview, King revealed that a pilot of the programme is likely to be rolled out as soon as next month. “We have programmes where we reach out to the communities and we are even doing more outreaches right now in terms of this programme,” King said.
According to the Chief Librarian, such programmes are instrumental, given a noticeable decline in literacy.
“Guyana has been known in the 70s, 80s and early 90s for educational attainment but something went wrong in the system. We have not been seeing the same level of results; it seems that some problems occurred limiting our achievements,” King observed.
Although Guyana has not failed to consistently yield some outstanding performers over the years, King observed that the society is plagued with a situation whereby “we have a lot of functional illiteracy.”
It was against this background, she said, “We are about to launch this programme called ‘Smart Skills’.”
King expects that the ‘Smart Skills’ initiative pilot, which is slated to span some 10 months, will gain the financial support of corporate Guyana.
She envisages that the start of the programme will target some 30 youths who after undergoing an orientation period will be catered to, based on their abilities.
“We are going to be working with them so that they can become literate. We have many people in our communities who do not know how to read and write but they have glorious ideas. When they have to put them [ideas] to paper or when they have to go to the bank and they are asked to write a business plan, they don’t know how to do that…so in our own little way, we are trying to help those in our society,” said King.
It is King’s view that through such programmes that promote literacy, the library is fulfilling part of its mandate.
The ‘Smart Skills’ programme will be conducted during the afternoon hours of the library and according to King, “We don’t want it to be too ‘classroomy’…it would be kind of structured whereby there will have interactive exercises. We will put them in groups based on their respective literacy level.”
The first aim of the programme, King related, is to ensure that the participants have a basic level of literacy before moves are made to elevate their literacy level to that of financial literacy.
King said, “There are people who can’t even use the ATM properly. They ask for help and then they get robbed. We want to look at those things, and we want to look at health literacy too because when you go to the doctor, you should be able to explain what are your symptoms and understand why you’re being prescribed certain drugs.”
She added, “You must be able to ask questions for your own safety and we expect that when we roll out this programme , women must be able to understand things like why have a pap smear as opposed to a VIA.”

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