Summaries of HUNGER PROJECTS in Africa
Working with ELCA World Hunger Program Partners.

Senegal—Literacy in National Languages at the Dakar Center.

Partners: ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Senegal.

DESCRIPTION:

Projet d’Appui a l’alphabetisation Fonctionelle – Priortie Femmes (PAPF) is a literacy project in national languages that was funded by the World Bank in 1997. The World Bank has been concentrating on literacy work in Senegal for several years. Many organizations made requests for funding, but many were denied. The Dakar Center was approved funding in 1997 for 30 groups to be trained in their national languages.

This request involved two phases, teaching classes in Pulaar and Wolof, which are the national languages in Senegal. Each class was composed of 30 people with a total of 30 groups. The age requirement for the group was 15-39 years old. Almost 99 percent of those who applied for the classes were women. Therefore, there were 900 women who took the literacy classes. The first phase involved basic literacy, while the second phase focused on learning skills that could enable the women to develop a profession or income generating occupation. The project is currently in the second phase, but the World Back only funded 20 groups of the entire 30 groups. In order for all the participants to receive the entire training, funding for the remaining groups was approved.

OBJECTIVES:

• To provide support towards the literacy and education of women.

• To enable the women to learn a skill that will provide an opportunity that will support them.

• To share the Good News with a predominantly Muslim population.

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Hunger Projects : Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda.