In a so­ci­ety that of­ten points to na­tion­al lit­er­a­cy sta­tis­tics as a mark­er of progress, the dai­ly re­al­i­ty for many chil­dren and adults tells a more com­plex sto­ry. While Trinidad and To­ba­go boasts rel­a­tive­ly high lit­er­a­cy rates, pock­ets of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ue to strug­gle with ba­sic read­ing and writ­ing skills—chal­lenges that can qui­et­ly shape ed­u­ca­tion­al out­comes, em­ploy­ment prospects and long-term so­cial mo­bil­i­ty.

It is with­in this gap that three non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions—Moms for Lit­er­a­cy, the Ro­tary Club of Mar­aval and AL­TA—have been work­ing steadi­ly to make a dif­fer­ence. Their ef­forts were re­cent­ly recog­nised and sup­port­ed by CIBC Caribbean’s ComTrust Foun­da­tion, which pro­vid­ed fund­ing to strength­en lit­er­a­cy ini­tia­tives across sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

At a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny held last month at CIBC Caribbean’s Mar­aval of­fice, head of coun­try, Trinidad, Ma­hadeo Se­barath, praised the or­gan­i­sa­tions for their sus­tained com­mit­ment to ed­u­ca­tion at both the youth and adult lev­els.

“Thank you for what you do,” Se­barath said. “We see you as ed­u­ca­tors, not on­ly to young stu­dents but to adults as well. Your ef­forts are re­al­ly im­pact­ing your re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties.”

Es­tab­lished in 1992, Moms for Lit­er­a­cy has long fo­cused on cus­tomised pro­grammes that build read­ing, writ­ing, com­pre­hen­sion and crit­i­cal think­ing skills.

Over the past two decades, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has as­sist­ed more than 10,000 stu­dents and de­vel­oped lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes for schools across T&T, along­side com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s work, its lead­ers be­lieve, has ef­fects far be­yond the class­room. By strength­en­ing lit­er­a­cy skills ear­ly, Moms for Lit­er­a­cy ar­gues that at least one life may be steered away from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, while spar­ing fam­i­lies years of frus­tra­tion and emo­tion­al strain linked to ed­u­ca­tion­al un­der­achieve­ment.

The Ro­tary Club of Mar­aval’s lit­er­a­cy ef­forts are sim­i­lar­ly root­ed in com­mu­ni­ty-based in­ter­ven­tion. Two years ago, CIBC Caribbean sup­port­ed the club’s AR­ROW pro­gramme, which pro­vid­ed tar­get­ed in­struc­tion to 25 stu­dents at La Sei­va RC School prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA). The suc­cess of that ini­tia­tive was re­flect­ed in the school’s sub­se­quent re­moval from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s watch list.

Build­ing on that mo­men­tum, the Ro­tary Club will now use the new fund­ing to of­fer SEA prepa­ra­tion lessons to Stan­dard Five stu­dents at Boissierre RC, La Sei­va RC, Paramin RC and Ram­panal­gas RC Pri­ma­ry Schools. The pro­gramme will run for six months, from Oc­to­ber 2025 to March 2026, with lessons de­liv­ered on-site by teach­ers rec­om­mend­ed by school prin­ci­pals.

For AL­TA, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion with more than 30 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, the fund­ing will sup­port its AL­TA On­line pro­gramme—an in­ter­ac­tive, Caribbean-fo­cused lit­er­a­cy plat­form de­signed to al­low stu­dents to learn in­de­pen­dent­ly. The project will pro­vide books for 27 stu­dents at San Juan Boys’ Pri­ma­ry and Barataria RC Schools who are con­sid­ered at risk of scor­ing be­low 50 per cent in SEA. With­out time­ly in­ter­ven­tion, ed­u­ca­tors warn, these stu­dents could en­ter sec­ondary school with­out the lit­er­a­cy foun­da­tion need­ed to cope with the cur­ricu­lum, leav­ing them ill-equipped for every­day read­ing and writ­ing de­mands lat­er in life.

Se­barath said the bank’s sup­port re­flects a broad­er phi­los­o­phy em­bed­ded in its op­er­a­tions.

“Phil­an­thropy plays an im­por­tant part in the bank’s cul­ture of care. We con­tribute one per cent of the bank’s net in­come to projects that en­hance so­cial de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

CIBC Caribbean’s ComTrust Foun­da­tion, the bank’s char­i­ta­ble arm, was es­tab­lished as a reg­is­tered char­i­ty in Bar­ba­dos and sup­ports projects across the 10 coun­tries in which the bank op­er­ates, con­tribut­ing no less than US$1 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

For the three re­cip­i­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions, the fund­ing rep­re­sents more than fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance—it is an af­fir­ma­tion that lit­er­a­cy, in all its forms, re­mains a shared na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.