Learning Poverty: What SACTS Is Doing To End It

While its appellation may be a bit foreign to some of us, learning about poverty is definitely not an unknown phenomenon in our society.

The World Bank defines it as: “the inability to read and understand a simple text by age 10.” Quite familiar, isn’t it? Very familiar.

You may be wondering why this topic is getting a lot of press recently, so here is your answer: the rate of learning poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa just surged to a daunting 89 % and 64% of 10-year-olds cannot read with understanding.

Why?

The reason for this, according to the World Bank, is that many children worldwide lack the fundamental skills and textbooks, hence, the inability to read proficiently.

The pandemic also largely influenced this situation because the longer the schools were closed, the more the children’s reading, numeracy, and writing shifted to the back burner.

Add that to the fact that not everyone could afford the digitization direction that learning took, education just kept nosediving.

What is SACTS doing to mitigate this?

• Provide indigent children with quality education and equal opportunities with their more privileged peers.
• Conduct assessment skills on both teachers and students to ensure that both the learning and teaching techniques are not subpar- in the least.
• Set up a book club where our partners who are also book authors come to read with our children.
• Assess each child’s strengths and weaknesses to know what to harness and/or leverage.
• Doing routine checks on each child to ensure that their education and mental and emotional well-being are well balanced.
• Provided extra lessons for children who were finding it hard to keep up in class.
• Work with speech therapy experts to help children with speech defects learn better.

How Can I Help?

• Be our partner by committing to give towards this cause, monthly, yearly, or at intervals of your choice.
• Spread the word to others who can help too.