Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­served World Teach­ers’ Day yes­ter­day, re­search con­duct­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (AL­TA) has high­light­ed the coun­try’s con­tin­u­ing lit­er­a­cy chal­lenge, with one in four peo­ple un­able to man­age every­day read­ing and writ­ing.

AL­TA tu­tor Tan­isha San­tok­ie said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is step­ping up its ef­forts to reach those in need of sup­port while re­cruit­ing more vol­un­teer tu­tors.

Speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency’s Touch of TVET ini­tia­tive at Rio Claro West Sec­ondary on Sat­ur­day, she said, “In our so­ci­ety, not every­one had that valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to school. A lot of peo­ple had to drop out. It was gen­der-based back then, so a lot of girls didn’t get to go to school, or maybe peo­ple went to school but didn’t get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fin­ish at sec­ondary lev­el ei­ther. And that’s where we step in and try to help peo­ple.”

San­tok­ie said some peo­ple need to learn how to read and write from scratch, while oth­ers may just need im­prove­ment.

Not­ing that re­search showed that one in four peo­ple are un­able to do every­day read­ing and writ­ing and 45 per cent are able to read sim­ple news­pa­per ar­ti­cles, she said, “Lev­els of il­lit­er­a­cy are high in Trinidad.”

She ex­plained that AL­TA is on a dri­ve to get new stu­dents and tu­tors.

“The aca­d­e­m­ic year has al­ready start­ed, but we are still en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to sign up.”

AL­TA, she said, is be­ing de­liv­ered on three plat­forms: com­mu­ni­ty class­es for adults 16 years and over, vir­tu­al class­es via Zoom for adults 16 years and over, and AL­TA On­line.

She said, how­ev­er, that the re­quire­ments for the vir­tu­al class­es and AL­TA On­line in­clude ac­cess to Wi-Fi and a smart de­vice.

San­tok­ie said ap­pli­cants pay $20 for work­books and phon­ics cards.

She said peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in spon­sor­ing some­one can al­so con­tact AL­TA’s head of­fice.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in find­ing out more about AL­TA can con­tact the or­gan­i­sa­tion at 624-2582, email in­fo@al­ta-tt.org, or vis­it www.al­ta-tt.org.