Kristen Proctor and Dr. Gordon Lindsay, Health Science

In the fall of 1999, I developed a proposal to research the effects of literacy and education on the health and socioeconomic status of women in rural Mexico. Shortly thereafter, I was asked to facilitate a group of student volunteers going to the Dominican Republic (D.R.) as a part of a collaboration between Latter-day Saint Charities,

Laubach Literacy International, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in the D.R. We were to help reduce the maternal and infant mortality rates of the Dominicans. Laubach Literacy International provided a manual, Good Health Begins At Home, which combined both basic literacy and health principles. The manual, previously used in parts of African, could directly or indirectly help to lower mortality rates among women and children. My project focus shifted to discovering how to revise the manual in order to fit the needs of the Dominicans in a manner appropriate to the culture and reality of the people of the country, to ultimately reduce maternal and infant mortality rates.

In February of 2000, three months before I set off to the D.R., Lynn Curtis, a representative of Laubach Literacy International and the author of Good Health Begins at Home, trained myself and two other volunteers in the philosophy and methodology of Laubach Literacy and the manual. Laubach uses an approach in which participants, usually women, gather together in learning groups. The women are shown some kind of code or symbol of a familiar reality–in the case of the manual, pictures of different health situations. The codes serve as catalysts for powerful dialogues. A carefully trained facilitator helps to guide the discussion of a learning group using questions that focus on the facts of the health situation depicted in the code, drawing on associations the women make to their own realities, examining the meaning of the code in the lives of the women, and finally, encouraging action or change as decided on by the women themselves to improve current situations.

Because Laubach’s philosophy includes maintaining a balance between teacher-guided learning and student-guided or student-initiated learning and a respect for the expertise of local peoples, I focused on working with existing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) already involved with women’s health and literacy in the D.R. rather than actually teaching learning groups. In a sense, I served as a facilitator to local facilitators who will in turn teach local people.

The majority of my time was spent working with two Catholic Organizations, Project Hope and FUNDASEP–urban and rural NGOs, respectively. Almost everyday, three of us would meet with Project Hope or FUNDASEP to review the contents of the manual. The local NGOs coached us as to changes that would necessarily make the manual more suitable to the realities of the Dominican people. It soon became obvious that rather than one polished copy of the manual, two distinct versions would emerge—one to fit the needs of the rural poor and one to fit the needs of the urban poor.

The rural Dominican version of the manual was basically completed by FUNDASEP within the two months that our volunteer group was in the country. I am still working to complete the urban version of the manual using the suggestions of Project Hope.

Next month, I will return to the D.R. with the revised urban manual. Both FUNDASEP and Project Hope have agreed to test the manuals for effectiveness in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. Other NGOs will also be trained to use the manual. In part, due to this project, similar pilot programs, in which the manual is being revised to fit local cultures and then tested for effectiveness, are being implemented all over the world by Laubach Literacy.