What is the initiative and where is it implemented (city or country)?
Yo, Si Puedo (Spanish for Yes, I Can) is a low-cost mass education programme that involves relevant government and non-government agencies and actors to promote literacy among adults. As of 2014, Yo, Si Puedo helped over 6 million people in 29 countries to acquire basic literacy
How was the initiative established? How was it implemented?
Now implemented across Latin America and Africa, the programme originated in the Cuban literacy campaign of 1961. Guided by international aid and cooperation, Cuba sent advisers with experience on literacy missions to several African and Latin American countries who were inspired by the programme and attempted to implement it. Mass adult literacy campaigns become the central point of adult education in the Global South.
Implementation took place in three phases:
- construction of local, regional, and national structures to encourage local communities to participate in the programme;
- literacy lessons;
- encouragement of graduates to undertake further activities
(Boughton & Durnan, 2014) .
Facilitators (often called monitors) implement the ‘instruction phase’ of the literacy programme. They have been trained by literacy educators. The facilitators oversee student participation and coordinate follow-up practices. A traditional phonics instruction method is used to build letter and sound awareness, followed by listening, reading and writing of letters, words, phrases and finally sentences and paragraphs.
The programme also follows a non-traditional ‘alphanumeric’ technique, which originated in the 1960s. Each letter is learnt in association with a specific number. The approach was strongly criticized
Another innovative technique implemented in the programme was the absence of formal assessment. Students who completed 64 lessons were able to perform basic reading and writing activities. The progress of the students was evaluated by ‘advancing’ in the class based on the facilitator’s observations. Those falling behind or struggling with the lessons received additional support.
Which stakeholders are involved in the design and/or implementation of the initiative? Which sectors do they represent?
The Institute of Pedagogy for Latin America and the Caribbean (IPLAC) created a Department of Literacy in 2000 to respond to the growing demand for literacy expertise. With governmental support, educators working in adult literacy were encouraged to experiment with the new forms of popular education which led to the development of the Yo, Si Puedo campaign model.
IPLAC implemented an innovative approach to reach a very large segment of the nation’s illiterate population by developing a simple low-cost model of education. The model featured a pre-recorded set of 64 one-hour lessons on DVD, which students watch under the supervision of their literacy mentors. The mentors, in turn, receive basic training from advisory teams of national literacy educators.
What are the impacts of the initiative in terms of facilitating lifelong learning? Who does it benefit and how?
Yo, Si Puedo proved successful because it employs strong multi-faceted approaches to adult education; it combines national social resources to mobilize, control and coordinate the process with innovative distance education technology.
The UNESCO study of 2006 found Yo, Si Puedo to be effective due to it being ‘more than a method’. The study argues that the model goes ‘beyond processes, materials, strategies, etc., as it includes, both explicitly and implicitly, concepts of literacy training, learning, life skills and social mobilization, and involves a wide range of actors with varied roles from the beneficiaries of the literacy training to other stakeholders such as state entities and other concerned institutions’
The Yo, Si Puedo programme has also been proven effective in combating patterns of educational inequality that take roots in institutionalized practices of the past. The initiative sparked a global literacy movement involving millions of people. Variations on Yo, Si Puedo have successfully implemented across the globe.
References:
Boughton, B. & Durnan, D. 2014. Cuba's Yo Sí Puedo. A global literacy movement? Postcolonial Directions in Education, 3(2), pp. 325-359.
Lind, A. 2008. Literacy for All: Making a difference. [online] Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000159785 [Accessed 13 October 2020].
UNESCO. 2006. Study on the Effectiveness and Feasibility of the Literacy Training Method Yo Si Puedo. [online] Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000146881 [Accessed 13 October 2020].