AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH
an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) has been the on­ly com­pre­hen­sive struc­tured adult lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the past thir­ty years and con­tin­ues to pro­vide ser­vices to hun­dreds of cit­i­zens.

For an­oth­er term, AL­TA is of­fer­ing free on­line class­es for those per­sons over the age of 16 years from both is­lands who wish to mas­ter their read­ing abil­i­ties.

On Thurs­day, the world cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day, an an­nu­al re­minder to the pub­lic of the im­por­tance of lit­er­a­cy as a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right. This year’s theme ‘Trans­form­ing Lit­er­a­cy Learn­ing Spaces’ di­rect­ly re­flects AL­TA’s cur­rent teach­ing mod­el with their de­ci­sion to op­er­ate their class­es over a vir­tu­al plat­form.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with AL­TA tu­tor and co­or­di­na­tor, Chela Bhimull, who ex­plained what is com­mon among adult stu­dents who have en­rolled in their class­es.

ALTA tutor and coordinator, Chela Bhimull. (Image courtesy ALTA)

“We have sto­ries of ex­treme pover­ty, do­mes­tic abuse, and per­sons with men­tal health chal­lenges. We have per­sons such as fa­thers who wish to make a bet­ter life for their fam­i­ly. Moth­ers who wish to read to their chil­dren, grand­par­ents who want to read the news­pa­per,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Bhimull, 741 stu­dents reg­is­tered and stayed with the pro­gramme dur­ing the last aca­d­e­m­ic year, adding to the thou­sands of past en­rol­ments dur­ing their ex­is­tence.

This was made pos­si­ble by fi­nan­cial spon­sor­ships from in­di­vid­u­als who wish to see those in need of read­ing lessons, ben­e­fit from the pro­gramme.

In a coun­try where there is free ed­u­ca­tion be­ing of­fered, there are many who still do not have ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion. Bhimull said that be­sides pover­ty and ill­ness, there are young chil­dren who go through life with un­di­ag­nosed learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and at­ten­tion dis­or­ders.

Dar­rel Hold­er is one of those fa­thers who on­ly re­alised lat­er in life that his abil­i­ty to read was lim­it­ed. This hap­pened one day af­ter strug­gling to help his chil­dren with their home­work.

“I bounce up one or two words that I start to get prob­lems with. And it’s like, you re­al­ly can’t fix or help your chil­dren or child… and it start to both­er me to the core,” said the 40-year-old fa­ther.

Darrel Holder, father and ALTA student. (Image courtesy ALTA)

Hold­er was grate­ful to see an ad­ver­tise­ment one day for AL­TA.  He took ad­van­tage of their free on­line class­es dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. He ex­plained that even though he had a ba­sic pri­ma­ry school-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion, he re­alised that he was far from flu­ent in his read­ing.

“When it comes to word­ing, there are cer­tain words that does be so short but so hard, you know? Like, it have the short words but they so hard to spell, the big­ger words so easy to spell,” he said.

Af­ter two terms of re­ceiv­ing lessons from tu­tors who vol­un­teer their time to en­sure adults feel a lot more con­fi­dent, Hold­er said he was grate­ful.

“I not fum­bling as I use to fum­ble when it comes to read­ing,” Hold­er said.

“Now with AL­TA, they helped me fig­ure it out now. It makes me feel proud­er and more con­fi­dent with­in my­self that I know that I went to do some­thing, and I ac­com­plished it. I still have a lot ahead,” he added.

Per­sons wish­ing to en­rol in class­es or vol­un­teer, can con­tact 708-1990, or vis­it AL­TA TT on Face­book.