Literacy
Wycliffe field personnel work with local community members, teaching people to read and write, and endeavoring to establish literacy as a community value. In many language programs, literacy work goes on side-by-side with Bible translation.
Literacy changes the way people think about themselves. It gives new value to their language and culture, and by implication, to their own person as well. Literacy also opens the door for education and growth. Readers can learn how to improve their family’s health, run a business, defend themselves from fraud, seek justice and, above all, grow closer to God by reading the Scriptures.
Literacy is a key to fulfilling the Great Commission. Jesus instructed His disciples to “go and make disciples of all the nations…teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you” (Matthew 28:19–20, NLT). When people can read, or know someone who can read to them, the written Word of God becomes invaluable to their spiritual growth as individuals and churches.
When the Manjak literacy program in Senegal started in 2005, local educational authorities in Sédhiou, the regional capital, were skeptical. There had never been a literacy program in the Manjak language before, and they didn’t think this marginalized group would be able to organize and run such a program. They were just waiting for them to fail! But the literacy program has made believers of the educational authorities—in just two years, 380 Manjak people have learned to read in their own language!
Interested in working in literacy?
More:
God used an undelivered letter to illustrate clearly the importance of mother-tongue literacy for all people. George Cowan tells the story in his own words: The Undelivered Letter.
The literacy statistics collected by UNESCO in 2001 provided some sense of the challenge ahead as well as the extraordinary benefit of literacy.
SIL reports on the importance of Mother Tongue Literacy Programs on their website.