Paula Lu­cie-Smith is a down-to-earth Tri­ni who is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the field of adult lit­er­a­cy. Hav­ing iden­ti­fied the big so­cial prob­lem of il­lit­er­a­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the West In­dies, she de­cid­ed to take steps to deal with it. She is the founder and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (Al­ta), the or­gan­i­sa­tion which she formed in 1992 as an NGO. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has trained 2,000 tu­tors in an ef­fort to bring re­lief to peo­ple with read­ing and writ­ing prob­lems. Lu­cie-Smith at­tend­ed St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter in Eng­land where she ob­tained a first de­gree in his­to­ry, and a Post Grad­u­ate Cer­tifi­cate in Ed­u­ca­tion. She start­ed her ca­reer as a sec­ondary school teacher in Trinidad, but in 1990 be­gan teach­ing an adult lit­er­a­cy class of about 20 peo­ple as a vol­un­teer. Two years lat­er she formed Al­ta to of­fer free lit­er­a­cy in­struc­tion to adults and to train adult lit­er­a­cy tu­tors. Al­ta's pro­grammes have since spread across the coun­try and re­gion. Class­es are of­fered at 50 venues through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and 59 tu­tor-train­ing cours­es have been run. Al­ta has part­nered with Ser­vol, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad & To­ba­go and the pris­ons. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­so been in­vit­ed to con­duct lit­er­a­cy train­ing in Grena­da, St Vin­cent and An­tigua. Since 1996, Lu­cie-Smith has been pro­duc­ing books for teach­ing read­ing, writ­ing and spelling us­ing lo­cal con­tent and in­cor­po­rat­ing key life skills. To date, she has writ­ten or edit­ed more than 60 Al­ta pub­li­ca­tions. In 2001 she was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Gold Medal. In 2008 Al­ta was se­lect­ed as a "mod­el for repli­ca­tion world­wide" by Un­esco and re­cent­ly she was se­lect­ed by The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence 2012.

What in­spires you to do what you do, teach­ing adults to read?

I have al­ways loved to teach and teach­ing adults to read has the pow­er to tru­ly trans­form. Not on­ly does read­ing bring knowl­edge and ac­cess to new skills, but changes your place in the world-from ex­clu­sion to in­clu­sion; from act­ed up­on to ac­tor; from fear to se­cu­ri­ty.

Who were the peo­ple who have in­flu­enced you the most in your ca­reer and how did they?

My ca­reer in Al­ta was shaped ini­tial­ly by neg­a­tive in­flu­ences that pushed me out of main­stream ed­u­ca­tion. So I be­came a vol­un­teer tu­tor in the Un­esco/Gov­ern­ment adult lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme in In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Year 1990. As a new field, adult lit­er­a­cy cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the needs of the learn­er and to im­ple­ment every­thing new in ed­u­ca­tion. In 1992 I did the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T train­ing course which pro­vid­ed the struc­ture and ex­plic­it teach­ing of read­ing skills miss­ing from adult lit­er­a­cy ma­te­ri­als and ap­proach­es. It al­so forged a last­ing part­ner­ship with the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion and in par­tic­u­lar with its founder, Cathryn Kelshall, who is a true teacher-keen to un­der­stand how her stu­dents learn, to make learn­ing fun and to her­self con­tin­ue learn­ing-and I con­tin­ue to learn from her. She has been the best of men­tors, ready to share or dis­cuss new ideas and un­fail­ing­ly pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive.

Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Born in Lon­don, Eng­land, dur­ing my par­ents' vis­it there. I re­turned with them at six weeks old and grew up in Val­sayn when it was 'deep bush' with co­conut trees, sand­flies for so, and the odd scor­pi­on.

When through your work or oth­er­wise you ex­pe­ri­ence the fall­out of so­cial is­sues hap­pen­ing in our coun­try what are your thoughts...so­lu­tions?

Re­spect is the key. Par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant is for those in po­si­tions of pow­er to re­spect those with­out-par­ent to re­spect child, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer to re­spect the pass­port ap­pli­cant, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in their anony­mous ve­hi­cles to re­spect oth­er users of the roads. The Al­ta class­room is found­ed on re­spect for each oth­er and co­op­er­a­tion (rather than com­pe­ti­tion)-tu­tor/stu­dent, tu­tor/tu­tor and stu­dent/stu­dent.

Who was your hero or "idol" grow­ing up (fic­tion­al or re­al or both) and why? And who do you ad­mire most to­day?

My moth­er, who con­tin­ues to live her life for oth­ers and drummed in­to me from young that "a self­ish per­son is the worst thing in the world." My stu­dent, Yvonne, who proves you can rise above your cir­cum­stances, can be full of good­ness, kind­ness and love even when these were de­nied you.

What dai­ly mot­to/cre­do do you live by...your recipe for suc­cess?

For every ac­tion and in­ac­tion there is a con­se­quence. Have a Plan B.

What ad­vice would you give to the young peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

First, work is lib­er­at­ing. Sec­ond, the world is full of good peo­ple-peo­ple who want to help you to suc­ceed. The world is al­so full of peo­ple who are hap­py to help you fail. Choose care­ful­ly who you spend your time with and al­ways work-even if you don't get paid for it.

If you could dine with any­one in his­to­ry who would it be and why?

Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture, who led Haiti to in­de­pen­dence. Since so much to­day is blamed on 'slav­ery', one who was born a slave and rose high above it could give a fas­ci­nat­ing in­sight in­to the psy­che and ef­fects of slav­ery. While we were eat­ing, I could warn him not to get on the ship to ne­go­ti­ate with the French as it was a trap. Just think what Haiti could be to­day if Tou­s­saint had had the chance to lead in peace as well as in war.

What are your most prized pos­ses­sions: one tan­gi­ble, one in­tan­gi­ble?

My fam­i­ly and my abil­i­ty to think.

Which so­cial work­er(s)/ac­tivist(s) do you ad­mire the most?

Clive Pan­tin, Di­ana Ma­habir and those at Re­birth House-to beat drugs you have to be strong. All en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists in T&T, like Ju­lian Ken­ny.

What keeps you go­ing in spite of all the frus­tra­tions you must en­counter or is it all smooth sail­ing?

Smooth sail­ing-no way. The wa­ter re­al rough! What keeps me go­ing: Al­ta stu­dents, whom I do not know and am meet­ing for the first time, say­ing to me "thank you," speak­ing with con­fi­dence and walk­ing tall. The tu­tors who say that Al­ta has made them see peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly and de­vel­oped tal­ents they didn't know they had. The Al­ta team of co­or­di­na­tors, train­ers, staff and board, who weath­er every storm with me.

Of all your ac­co­lades and awards which do you rate as ex­treme­ly spe­cial?

The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Award for Ex­cel­lence as this has brought the field of adult lit­er­a­cy in­to the pub­lic con­scious­ness as nev­er be­fore. A pres­ti­gious award like this could be­gin to chip away at the stig­ma at­tached to poor read­ing. Be­ing in­duct­ed in­to the St Joseph's Con­vent Hall of Ex­cel­lence al­so re­mains close to my heart as maybe I can in­spire just one or two of the school­girls as they dai­ly walk by the hall, years af­ter my en­er­gy is long gone.

What ad­vice would you give to the coun­try's lead­ers to cre­ate a bet­ter so­ci­ety?

Time to start set­ting a good ex­am­ple-stay here to deal with is­sues in­stead of more for­eign trips. Award jobs and con­tracts on the ba­sis of mer­it and com­pe­tence. Take care how you spend the pub­lic purse.

Are ads full of self praise le­git­i­mate spend­ing of pub­lic funds? Just be­cause a past gov­ern­ment did wrong, does not en­ti­tle any present gov­ern­ment to do the same.

What is your great­est fear in life?

I don't think much about fear, but if you want one def­i­nite fear: big, big roach!

What was the most dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion you ever had to make?

None comes to mind, maybe be­cause once a de­ci­sion is made the process is no longer rel­e­vant. De­ci­sion takes you for­ward, nev­er back­ward.

What goals and or am­bi­tions do you still have?

A com­pre­hen­sive plan is ur­gent­ly need­ed to ad­dress adult lit­er­a­cy needs, es­pe­cial­ly in the many gov­ern­ment skills train­ing pro­grammes. Mil­lions of dol­lars and count­less hours are wast­ed on train­ing that can­not be ful­ly utilised when the re­cip­i­ent can­not read. It seems ob­vi­ous that the nu­mer­ous train­ing pro­grammes should work to­geth­er so that ap­pli­cants to any pro­gramme are first screened and if need­ed re­ferred to in­ten­sive (eg dai­ly four-hour) Al­ta lit­er­a­cy class­es. These could be of­fered at key lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide per­haps part­ner­ing with the Work­force As­sess­ment Cen­tres. With­in two-to-six months most ap­pli­cants should be able to com­plete Al­ta Lev­el 2-func­tion­al read­ing and writ­ing-and move on to their cho­sen field of train­ing. Al­ta's free lit­er­a­cy ser­vices are most need­ed in rur­al ar­eas where lit­er­a­cy lev­els are low­est, but Al­ta suf­fers from a short­age of vol­un­teer tu­tors and the com­mu­ni­ty links to mo­bilise peo­ple in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. Al­ta can on­ly ex­tend its lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme to these new ar­eas through cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship or gov­ern­ment part­ner­ship. A nat­ur­al part­ner would be the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment which could con­tract ex­pe­ri­enced Al­ta tu­tors to teach at com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres where Al­ta does not have a near­by class. In 2013 I plan to start de­vel­op­ing Al­ta on­line and we are seek­ing ex­pert guid­ance and fund­ing for this. Al­ta on­line will by­pass the shame fac­tor and bring Al­ta to per­sons who can­not or will not come to Al­ta's free com­mu­ni­ty class­es.

What else about you would you like our read­ers to know?

Read­ing is a skill, and like all skills-mu­sic, lan­guage, sports, plumb­ing-some of us have nat­ur­al tal­ent and ac­quire it eas­i­ly; some have great dif­fi­cul­ty and need spe­cialised in­struc­tion; most fall at the var­i­ous points be­tween these two poles of ease and dif­fi­cul­ty. So some brains come wired for read­ing and writ­ing, oth­ers do not. Equal­ly im­por­tant, this wiring does not say any­thing about your abil­i­ty to think. When we all un­der­stand this, those with read­ing dif­fi­cul­ties will be able to seek help open­ly with­out fear of ridicule. When go­ing to an adult lit­er­a­cy class is no more emo­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing that go­ing to a mu­sic or com­put­er class, then we will be on the road to lit­er­a­cy.