Learning your ABCs as an adult can be a painstaking undertaking but for a group of blackfellas in the small Australian outback town of Brewarrina having a caring friend by your side makes all the difference in the world, in fact it can lead you to discover the transformative powers of reading and writing for the first time in your life.
It’s estimated that today in Australia between 40 - 65% of Aboriginal adults are functionally illiterate in English, but out in North West New South Wales moves are afoot to whittle away at this appalling statistic.
Using a Cuban method called ‘Yes I Can’, a group called the Literacy for Life Foundation are moving into towns, setting up classrooms, and offering Aboriginal men and women an opportunity to learn to read and write, and it seems there are no shortage of takers.
Key to the success of the program is that local Aboriginal people familiar to students are hand picked by the community and trained on the job to be the teachers.
