TO SEE school students cheerfully drilling in the scorching sun is no unusual sight in Managua these days. It is part training for a particularly tough assigament. In March they leave their classrooms to spend five months in the remote rural areas. There, in the fields, under trees, in village homes, they will teach poorest communities to read and write.
This is Nicaragua's new literacy crusade. A massive $20 million successfully mobilised 180,000 student and adult volunteers into literacy brigades for work on farms and in factories throughout COLLE. Explains the national co-ordinator, Fernando Cardenal: •re don't want to create super schools and we can't wait for specialist teachers. We're taking anyone who has reached the third grade...' *Literacy is liberation' street hoardings. By the crasade aims to "liberate' Nicaraguans over 10 years old.
It's an expensive resoarces for refloating the economy are in Bete peratety short sapply. Then again Is a great deal at stake. The Sandinistas ask of cona 21 Fe of their neglect to their country's the country's venture, has campaign's To help government between end of 198 the says.
Once in 900,000 operation when production.
their brief.
Wage 8 illiterate and where on the isolated Atlantic coast some peasants stili den't know the insurrection has happened!
People's expectațions are bigh after the victory against Somoza. But with 43 years of put right, changes may painfully slow in some places. So the literacy drive is above all a political project — a way of discussing the government's response to problems and of orging everyone to step up production. 'Somoza couldn't survive without the support of the masses', says Cardenal, "and we can't do anything without them.
devise the campaign called in Braziian Paulo Freire. : Opening dialogue students and peasants interests him most. 'The young people will learn much more than they will teach', he the villages, the volunteers will be expected to pui in severa hours' work a day in the fields to maintain Distributing nutrition advice ind collecting stories, songs and poems the different regions is also part of associations of women, peasants, youtb and workers' organisations the Sandinista Defence Committees — are busy gearing many of their activities to the literacy effort. Through the campaign the ¿ government hopes to draw more and more workers into these base groups, turn will help to push forward & iong-term adult education programme for the country In the meantime, as Paulo Freire says, '$20 million won't soive problems of Nicaragua but it can awaken, motivate and mobilise the country, and this is what the crusade really means.
Hugo Blanco speaks at London rally Friday 21 March 7.30pm, Friends House, Euston Rd, NW1 Organised by IMG which in the economic What women could stay at home after that?' Thirty Altagracia women joined the newly formed Sandinista police force Many others continue to give the lead as the barrio leaves the dark and attempts to The Erlinda Lopez Women's Centre in Managua. The ind (AMN) has a foothold in 14 regions of the country.
•A visit to Managua's AMN headquarters welcomin bustling with activity - reveal something of what these aims mean on a day-to-day level.
women are • sorting clothes made by one of their new work collectives, and books and satchels for the literacy campaign. Health volunteers are studying new nutrition leaflets.
meeting IS in progress how handle education and prosttules..
Co-operation the