Last week I went to Sabah to visit our Literacy Centers. It has been almost 6 months since I last visited.
It was good to hear that many of last year’s students have found jobs —not the usual manual jobs available to them (eg, in construction sties, in public markets) but “white-collar” jobs (in internet cafes, in mobile phone shops, in restaurants). Several of them, in their early teens, are earning more than what their parents get! Indeed, the literacy and numeracy that they learned in our Literacy Centers have given them the opportunity to get these jobs.
I was told that their ability to speak English and the good character that they had developed in our centers were also important factors in getting employment.
One day, as I was in the Goducate car passing a row of shop-houses, one our former students, who is now working in a mobile-phone shop, recognized the car and waved at us. I got out of the car to chat with her. She was so excited to tell me about her work at the shop. I remembered her as a shy little girl who had learned “phonics” and numeracy in a few months, then moved on to being an assistant teacher, and now she was ready to learn all about mobile-phones. In a mere 2 years, she had moved on from illiteracy and hopelessness to employability and hope.
As I returned to the car and waved goodbye to her, I felt a sense of “fatherly pride” as I watched another one of our students bravely entering an exciting new world that they had once never imagined they could penetrate.
Indeed, there are few things as satisfactory as helping a person help himself!