Pakistan: Literacy Liberates! World Education's Family Reading Program for Women in Rural Pakistan

I feel like a blind person who has finally been gifted with eyes! Before I came to this class, I could not sign my name. I was a dependent person. Now I can read medicine labels. I am not cheated at the market. I can read my children's homework and I can help them." So enthuses, Kara, a graduate of World Education's Family Reading Program, in Kila Saiffullah, Pakistan.

In Kara's rural Pakistan, cultural and societal traditions prevent most women from leaving the house without a male escort, making it nearly impossible for women to attend classes at local literacy centers. So World Education and our local partners in the Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA) project decided to bring literacy classes to women where they can study: in their own homes with their neighbors.

Since 2003, ESRA, World Education and local partners have helped over 100,000 women in some of Pakistan's most isolated areas learn to read, write and do basic math, while also learning important information about health, sanitation, and civic involvement. Many of the women were learning these skills for the first time in their lives. Women were so motivated by the first six-month course that they asked World Education to continue the work and thus, the Family Reading Program was born, funded by USAID.

Here's how it works: Small spaces in women's homes are set aside as 'reading corners,' where groups of 10 to 20 women meet twice-weekly. They are joined by a family literacy mentor—a local female volunteer who is literate—and practice by reading aloud. Each mentor works with ten groups in a community, reaching about 100 women per week. She also acts as a 'mobile library,' carrying books to each meeting.

Since reading material is hard to come by in rural Pakistan, women started writing their own books, capturing stories from their families, cultures and communities with words and pictures. One woman created a written copy of oral bedtime stories that her mother, who was illiterate, had told her, Stories My Mother Never Read to Me. As these women break the cycle of illiteracy, they are documenting their oral history and helping their children value reading and education. Neighboring reading groups exchange books via their traveling mentors, keeping the selections in the mobile library fresh and enticing. Individual stories published by local presses are enriching and promoting reading, literacy, health and critical thinking for more than 1000 women and their children.

The Family Reading Program is not unlike a book group, providing women the opportunity to learn from each other in a comfortable, familiar place. The 'reading corners' allow them to study with extended family and neighbors, and to read there with their children at night. One woman said, "Now I take interest and involve myself in my children's education." Another remarked, "We used to keep pistols, now we keep books."

Word of the basic literacy program is spreading and more women are asking for reading programs in their communities. ESRA, World Education and our local partners are working to replicate the program in additional reading centers in rural Pakistan, creating formal traveling libraries and replicating the books the women create. In extremely remote areas where an estimated 83% of women are illiterate, traveling libraries will link isolated women and children with stories, ideas, and people in the outside world, a crucial element for bringing about change.