Community empowerment through enhanced literacy

Local community themes

Local community themes formed the subject content of the curriculum. This concept was dependent on research and the careful investigation of community needs. If there were no clinics, for instance, the purification of water would be part of the curriculum since it carried with it skills that were crucial to the welfare of the particular community that had identified the lack of clean water as a pressing need. As a starting point, within four months people could learn to read in their mother tongue, with 128 hours spent on the programme. To consolidate and prove their literacy they had to produce such documents as a personal report of some event, an authenticated letter, and a personal biographical profile. Most candidates could eventually read with insight the Ilanga Lase Natali newspaper started in 1903 by the famous educationist John Langalibalele Dube who lived at Inanda, a community twenty kilometers north of the port city of Durban.