International Model, Victoria Michaels has launched a $500,000 Africa literacy development initiative in Ghana.
The pilot initiated was launched at the Awudome Junior Secondary School in Accra last week, as part of her birthday celebrations. Through her Victoria Michaels Foundation, she was able to provide over 500 books to the library – obliging to the request of the headmistress for additional furniture for the library.
She said, “I am very grateful to God for the opportunity He has given me again to see another year. This particular birthday celebration is remarkable for me in so many ways, one very important aspect is my determination to GIVE BACK something of worth. through my foundation and our partners.”
The Victoria Michaels Foundation is committed its mantra of ” Touching lives everywhere” through various developmental projects and programs across the African continent. The foundation was founded to focus on this three major areas – Education, Women/ Girls Child Development and Youth Empowerment.
The African Literacy Development initiative (ALDI) is the Foundation’s flagship Education Project, developed as aresponse to lack of libraries, books, and well resourced community literacy and technology centers in both rural and semi urban Sub Saharan Africa. The GOAL of the Africa Literacy Development Initiative (ALDI) is to advocate, manage and implement libraries and literacy development centers in deprived communitiesand also to promote greater international and local partnerships towards literacy development in Africa.
I know that so many of you may be wondering why The Victoria Michaels Foundation chose to undertake a project along the lines of educational empowerment. For me, this very emotional topic as it underscores the very foundation of the problems we currently face in Africa.
As a model and entrepreneur, I have the opportunity to travel around the continent and my interactions have revealed the existence of a huge deficit in the provision of literacy and library facilities, especially in public schools both in the rural and urban areas. This situation is saddening and unfortunate considering that Africa’s socio economic and political setbacks can be traced mostly to illiteracy.
Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context.
The ability to read, write, and communicate connects people to one another and empowers them to achieve things they never thought possible. According to our own illustrious former Secretary General of the UN, HE. Kofi Annan ” For everyone everywhere, literacy is…. a basic human right”.
The problems associated with public sector education are becoming even worse by day. As a product of public sector education, I remember the challenges myself and other fellow students had to go through in order to have access to learning materials and books. This trend have continued to the extent that so many schools in both rural and urban Africa have no libraries, resource or technology centers for further and better literacy development. The following facts are true about illiteracy in Sub Saharan Africa –
How long will this be allowed to continue? as we look positively look forward to a better future for our people, it is important to deal with the challenges facing literacy education in our continent. We can do something about this problem today, we have to alter the above statistic to the betterment of our people. We all must accept that illiteracy is a condition that denies people of opportunity.
The Victoria Michael Foundation through its Africa Literacy Development Initiative (ALDI) together with our partners projects to commit at least $500,00 dollars within the next year in the provision of books, multi media learning aids, community libraries and resource centers to underserved public schools in Africa starting from Ghana.
This project is designed to develop andbequeath a lasting literacy infrastructure for the selected public schools across Africa. We have continued with a need assessment program that identifies deprived schools and communities that will need these resources the most.
It is true that no single solution exists to dealing with the problems plaguing the educational sector in Africa, especially in rural communities.
The Africa Literacy Development Initiative is determined to elevate the conversation as well as coordinate an action plan that will contribute effectively to the enlargement and development of our literacy space
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