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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Getting the message out to men

by

20140410

This week I'd like to switch gears a bit and talk about those whom AL­TA serves.

AL­TA has es­tab­lished a na­tion­al adult lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme in a coun­try that con­tin­ues to claim 98 per cent lit­er­a­cy and where the shame at­tached to low lit­er­a­cy means that most pre­fer to re­main hid­den than act to im­prove their lit­er­a­cy.

When it be­gan in 1992, AL­TA set out to ad­dress a seem­ing­ly non-ex­is­tent prob­lem for clients who pre­fer to re­main in­vis­i­ble.

I have al­ways found the male per­spec­tive on AL­TA to be in­ter­est­ing. Most, though not all, seem baf­fled that AL­TA class­es are taught en­tire­ly by un­paid vol­un­teer tu­tors.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty of AL­TA tu­tors are work­ing women, of­ten with de­mand­ing jobs and many al­so with fam­i­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Many are sin­gle and self-sup­port­ing. Of course there are male tu­tors, among them some ex­cel­lent tu­tors.

To bring bal­ance to our teach­ing teams and pro­vide role mod­els for stu­dents, we ac­tive­ly en­cour­age male tu­tors.

But every year on our three tu­tor train­ing cours­es, I look around and can quick­ly count the men. Some cours­es do not have a sin­gle male among the 30 plus par­tic­i­pants. Some­times I see the sole male look­ing around the room and at some point he asks, "Where are the oth­ers like me?"

Male stu­dents like­wise have been dif­fi­cult to at­tract to AL­TA and in the first decade, AL­TA class­es–even if they start­ed with sev­er­al men–af­ter the first term com­prised most­ly women.

AL­TA has worked to get the mes­sage to Tri­ni men. Every year, we try to get male stu­dents to speak in the me­dia about their AL­TA ex­pe­ri­ence but more women than men are will­ing to "come out", to face the world.

Women are more like­ly to have the kind of courage that en­ables them to ad­mit to weak­ness.

Our most suc­cess­ful out­reach was in 2010 when AL­TA stu­dent num­bers went up to 2,000 for the first time.

In a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage aired on prime-time TV, Road March kings JW & Blaze told the na­tion "If you can't read, is time yuh put yuh foot down, man! Stand up for your­self. Come to AL­TA."

Two young men talk­ing di­rect­ly to the men of T&T–and the men re­spond­ed out­num­ber­ing the women in our class­es for the first time.

I re­mem­ber two SWM­COL work­ers, big men tow­er­ing over every­one else in the class, who were in the be­gin­ner class and who quot­ed word-for-word parts of that ad say­ing, "it was like he was talk­ing to me".

What hap­pened next to them though shows the bar­ri­ers AL­TA stu­dents face.

These two young men al­ways came to­geth­er to class. Then just one turned up and when I asked about his friend, he said, "Paula, they pass him out. Just like that.

He was next to me and they just pass him out.

They pass him out. I have to go now." We nev­er saw him again and he didn't re­spond to ef­forts to reach him.

The vi­o­lence hits AL­TA stu­dents hard. At one time in the Bel­mont class alone, a stu­dent was gunned down, then the son of a stu­dent, then the son of a tu­tor.

What learn­ing could pos­si­bly take place in that class?

AL­TA stu­dent num­bers are a barom­e­ter for the state of the na­tion.

When there is a feel­ing of hope and stu­dents can re­turn home af­ter dark in rel­a­tive safe­ty, our num­bers grow.

Need­less to say, the num­ber of cur­rent stu­dents has fall­en.

Note­wor­thy though, since 2010, AL­TA has re­tained a bal­ance be­tween male and fe­male stu­dents and in some class­es the men now out­num­ber the women.

But the bot­tom line re­mains that women are more will­ing to face their fears, to brave the shame and act to im­prove their lit­er­a­cy. Men, are you lis­ten­ing?

Be­come a part of AL­TA. Vol­un­teer, do­nate, spread the word. AL­TA vol­un­teers are un­paid.

Call 624-AL­TA (2582) or email al­tatt@ya­hoo.com or find us on Face­book: AL­TA Trinidad.


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