Our Programs

Literacy for Women in Africa

BSK has an adult literacy program dubbed literacy for women in Africa. This program mainly targets a group of women of child-bearing age (15 years and above) who have not had the opportunity to learn to read and write.

BSK has an adult literacy program dubbed literacy for women in Africa. This program mainly targets a group of women of child-bearing age (15 years and above) who have not had the opportunity to learn to read and write.
Other persons targeted by the programme include men, young girls, and elderly women. This could also include women who have already had the opportunity to learn to read ‘second chance.’

Turkana County has low literacy levels of 20% considering that it has a population of 926,976 speakers of the language. Non-literates account for 741,580.

The Literacy for Women in Africa programme is currently being implemented in the County with 20 active adult literacy classes spread across Loima, Turkana Central, Turkana North, and Turkana South sub-counties. The program has grown tremendously since 2018 when it began with 10 pilot classes. So far, 1920 learners have been trained with 65% of them being women.

The reason why the program majorly focuses on women is that in the marginalized communities women or girls are denied a chance to go to school, as priority is given to men. Women are seen as people who carry out house chores, bear children, go through practices e.g. female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriages thus denying them a chance to access education or any form of schooling.

The uniqueness of this program is that it is a non-formal mother tongue-based education meant to impact adult learners with basic reading and writing skills. The main goal of the program is to enable the marginalized communities to read the Word of God in their heart language and be transformed by it.

BSK partners with the Church to implement this programme. The Churches provide venues that are used as classes, they identify passionate people who are trained as teachers, and they assist in monitoring. The Directorate of Adult and Continuing Education office has also come in handy in helping learners to transition to formal schooling to learn other subjects.

other Programs & projects

Open the Book & Programme For Pastoral Instruction PPI

Braille Bible Distribution to the VIP’s Programme

Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH)

Mwimbi Bible Translation

Young Samaritans Programme

Literacy for Women in Africa

Bibles Eagles Club

African Biblical Leadership Initiative (abli)

Marginalized Children

 

Gikuyu Study Bible Project

Banyala Bible Translation Project

Teso Bible translation project

 

Literacy Programme Teachers Empowered

Written by Joy Balusi

May 20, 2021

Bible Society of Kenya held refresher training for teachers in the Turkana literacy classes to build their capacity for effective teaching. These teachers have been training in the literacy for Women in Africa programme conducted by the Society in Turkana County.

Ongoing literacy training session

The training was done in partnership with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) an organization that handles language development and training.

The training was held at KAG Soweto Church in Lodwar from 10th to 14th May 2021. A total of 40 teachers were trained on various topics including phonetic awareness, vocabulary development, fluency reading, fluency writing, and comprehension. The teachers were also taken through the theories of literacy, orthography, and the introduction to the learners’ primer and how to use the teacher guide.

The teachers who were going to train adult learners in 20 classes were reminded of the importance of applying proper skills and knowledge in their teaching methodology. The use of mother tongue in teaching the learners was emphasized by the trainers as it was key in helping the learners understand the lessons.

The climax was the commissioning of the teachers to use the knowledge acquired to transform the community through the literacy programme. The teachers received stationery, learners’ primers, and supplementary reading materials from BSK.

Through these literacy classes, many people have been empowered and are now able to have better standards of living. We hope that above all the learners will be able to read the Bible and find hope and direction from it.

We thank our partners for giving learners in Turkana County to access education.

 

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