Unlocking Potential - AEF& Apapa Literacy Program: The Impact of the Apapa Literacy Program on Community Development

The Apapa Literacy program is a literacy program organised in partnership with Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Apapa. Our audience for this program are children and adults in the Apapa axis who have little or no background in literacy. This program is run bi-annually and each session runs for about 6 months.

The literacy classes began in October 2023 with approximately 10 students then it grew to 30 students as of sept 2024 and even more tried to join that we had to turn away.

The profile of the group consists primarily of females (5:1), and notably, those not attending school are from the Northern Nigeria. The age range cuts across 7-60 years old. This highlights also the systemic neglect of education/literacy skills development over the decades.

Our aim was to equip our literacy class students with skills which they would be able to use in everyday life, such as the alphabet, being able to form letters, punctuation reading and writing enhancing general vocabulary, conversation techniques in the English language, such as useful connectors, an introduction, body and a conclusion, informal and formal letters and how to speak and describe their good points at a job interview in order to succeed.

So, in answer to the question as to whether we are achieving our objectives, an extract of progress from the lower class are presented (Table 1).

Some of the challenges we perceive the children encounter are as follows:

1. Some of the children go to school but are not being taught well because the teachers are not being paid enough to sustain them, thereby creating a vicious cycle of a poor work ethic, in relation to both students and teachers.

2. The children go to school but are exhausted due to household chores, as well as work related to helping their parents to earn enough money to feed (see Table 2 below for extract of attendance record). Therefore, even if the teacher is good, there is no time for homework.