Basic Education and Literacy is one of The Rotary Foundation’s seven areas of focus. We know that basic education and literacy are essential for reducing poverty, improving health, encouraging community and economic development, promoting peace and supporting the environment.   Just imagine for a moment what your life would look like if you could not read.
 
Consider these facts:
 
· If all women completed primary education, there would be 66% fewer maternal deaths.
 
· A child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five.
 
· If all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which would be equivalent to a 12% cut in world poverty.

 

Literacy is a focus of our Rotary E-club of the SWUSA.  We support the Books to Brilliance Foundation through Club District Grants.  Kim Covill, our club service chair, is a founder of Books to Brilliance.  The following are excerpts from their origin story.     

With a $3000 grant from the Dr. Seuss Foundation, the three founders of From Books to Brilliance purchased 967 books in Managua for beginning and intermediate readers. In 2007 Maggie Covill, Emily Lopez Padilla and Kim Covill planned to create a library in a remote village of central Nicaragua. To their delight, much of the literature was locally written and published, perfectly suitable for its future readers.

While volunteering with a medical delegation from the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston (UTMB), the founders placed their precious cargo atop an old yellow school bus, the vehicle that would transport the doctors, dentists, nurses, medical students, and translators to Mulukuku. Packed with luggage and supplies to last for three weeks, the bus seemed overloaded. Nonetheless, they headed to the Maria Luisa Ortiz Women’s Cooperative, knowing that bunkbeds, mosquito nets, good food and clean water awaited them.

The idea for a book project began the summer before, after Kim visited an elementary school in the nearby village of Santa Rita, while translating for the delegation. In a one-room, unpainted and windowless shack she was appalled to see students doing math problems on a worn-out blackboard and scraps of paper. In tropical heat and humidity, the children sat in old wooden desks on a dirt floor. There were no books. After introducing herself and with the children listening, the teacher declared “Estos niños no tienen futuro,” or “These children have no future.” Shocked by that reality, Kim began to promote the future of those students through a simple, yet powerful literacy program. 

 Origin Story — From Books to Brilliance

Kim Covill - photo center