HYDERABAD: An idea that changed the lives of several illiterate women in a small village in rural Andhra Pradesh will now be heard in the corridors of the New York Public Library in the US at the White House Conference on Global Literacy on September 18.

The literacy movement that started in Kothapalli hamlet of Gopallanapalem village in East Godavari district in which learning was combined with training in skills that generate income not only improved women's literacy but also their livelihoods. The model was later adopted across the State under the Akshara Sankranthi programme.

Model at meeting

The author of the concept, C. Krishna Mohan Rao, Deputy Director, Adult Education, will present the model at the conference that will also see eight other speakers from across the globe presenting their success models in improving adult education. Mr. Rao is the only Indian and one among the two Asians invited to speak with the other one being from Afghanistan. That the first lady of the US, Laura Bush, is the host of the event makes it all the more important.

The model adopted by Mr. Rao and his team was to expose illiterate women to Telugu alphabets and ask them to recognise the symbols and read them. Only important 29 of the 56 Telugu alphabets that normally occur were used initially.

They picked up the crucial alphabets within a week and started recognising words in the second week. Within 42 days they could read any script comfortably. "It was a totally different experiment and an important lesson drawn from it is that literacy programmes and livelihood enhancement when linked complement each other," Dr. Rao says. A significant social impact of the programme was that it increased the enrolment of children in schools.

Dr. Rao, who will present the paper under the "Literacy for Economic Self-Sufficiency" theme, feels the model can be emulated in any country and in any language that has a script.

One to follow the other

Once reading skills are acquired writing comes quite easily as was proved in this model and later adopted by some universities too. He says that women can pick up the skills much faster than men given the deft movements of their hands.

The White House conference being hosted by Laura Bush will rally political will and encourage first ladies and national decision makers to support literacy across the globe apart from sharing the best practices.

It is the first such initiative being taken up in cooperation with UNESCO and USAID.

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