"If I can help some­body, as I pass along ...Then my liv­ing shall not be in vain"–A Bazel An­droz­zo

As 2016 com­mences I pause to re­flect and sin­cere­ly ex­press my deep felt thanks to the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) for restor­ing rel­e­vance to my life and re­viv­ing my faith in hu­man­i­ty at a time when I des­per­ate­ly need­ed it.

Be­fore ac­cept­ing the AL­TA in­vi­ta­tion to give back through lit­er­a­cy ed­u­ca­tion, I had known about this as­so­ci­a­tion for many years, but I al­ways had some rea­son why I could not par­tic­i­pate... un­til that day.

I re­mem­ber it as if it were yes­ter­day. As I was men­tal­ly push­ing my­self to­wards my work­place, I saw a no­tice on the door. I was about to re­move the fly­er to dump it, when I hes­i­tat­ed as I read, "The Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion is seek­ing vol­un­teers to teach adults to read and write."

I paused. This time I had ab­solute­ly no ex­cus­es. I qui­et­ly re­moved the fly­er, re­treat­ed to my of­fice and made the call. Af­ter be­ing told that I was call­ing on the very last day for reg­is­tra­tion, I knew this was it. No more pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. Time to en­gage in an ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ing and en­rich­ing ad­ven­ture.

Af­ter an in­tense and eye-open­ing train­ing ses­sion, I em­barked up­on a ful­fill­ing jour­ney - a jour­ney on which I met some re­al­ly down-to-earth, lov­ing, car­ing, in­tel­li­gent and re­mark­able in­di­vid­u­als who on recog­nis­ing they need­ed help, shook off their fears and shame and board­ed the Al­ta train.

This jour­ney en­light­ened me to the fac­tors that hin­der lit­er­a­cy. Now wher­ev­er I go, I am on the look­out for the signs of low lit­er­a­cy and gen­tly of­fer my help. Very ear­ly in the jour­ney, I ob­served a sig­nif­i­cant phe­nom­e­non. A per­son's self-es­teem grows dra­mat­i­cal­ly once the seeds of lit­er­a­cy ed­u­ca­tion are plant­ed. He or she be­comes more con­fi­dent and is no longer afraid to ex­press ideas and feel­ings. It's like watch­ing a ba­by be­gin to walk.

Thanks to AL­TA's team-teach­ing phi­los­o­phy and prac­tice, I can bold­ly de­clare that adults from dif­fer­ent walks of life can in­deed work to­geth­er as a team for the greater good. Thanks to AL­TA, I was re­mind­ed and re-ed­u­cat­ed that the let­ters of the al­pha­bet can be sound­ed out. I al­so learned that when­ev­er I en­counter a 'big' word which I can­not pro­nounce, I should not skip it over, but syl­la­ble di­vide the word and use phon­ics to de­code it. Again thanks to AL­TA, I was in­tro­duced to gram­mat­i­cal tips that were long for­got­ten or nev­er learnt. So you see, in giv­ing back, I was blessed! Fi­nal­ly, thank you Al­ta be­cause through my week­ly, two-day com­mit­ment I re­alised that there is more to life than our dai­ly work. Work­ing in your cho­sen ca­reer is good, but paus­ing to up­lift an­oth­er per­son is bet­ter! There is an in­ex­plic­a­ble joy that an AL­TA vol­un­teer ex­pe­ri­ences when he/she wit­ness­es the lib­er­at­ing pow­er of lit­er­a­cy in the lives of men and women.

Grace Lawrence,

AL­TA Tu­tor