Dear Friend,

This week from a call with our partner in Karamoja, Uganda, I heard an amazing story that helped me understand how adult literacy goes way beyond being able to read and write.

Soldiers had been coming to a community with our program to look for men to arrest. There had been a series of recent cattle raids in the area, and the soldiers were looking for the perpetrators. A young man from one of our adult literacy groups showed the soldiers his literacy class notebook to prove that he was learning, that he wasn’t a young person who was a cattle raider. And it saved him!

The young man in the picture here shared this story, and in the picture he is gesturing how he explained to the soldiers that he was a student of literacy, and not a raider.

How different from our daily lives. What an amazing impact. Adult literacy changes lives in many ways I could never imagine: such as being able to access medical records for the first time in a person’s life.

Adult literacy has transformed our Savings Groups as well. They have even been singing songs of gratitude about the changes they have seen.