Litteracy at the heart of development: Bridging North and South

L'Atelier des lettres in Niamey
By Martine Fillion
Atelier des lettres and RGPAQ representative

I'm thrilled to be able to speak to you tonight. Since I’m last, I will allow myself to say a few words of a somewhat personal nature. For me, this is a wonderful occasion to tell you how inspiring partnerships between North and South can be.

For just over two years, I’ve been working on building that bridge between RGPAQ groups and CECI’s partners in the South. My involvement in this project is a direct result of my firm belief in its value.

In spite of very different intervention scenarios in the field, our battles are the same: we see Poverty, we see Exclusion! Furthermore, we share the same principles and values; whether it be in Niamey, Dakar or Montreal, literacy is not an end in itself but a tool for action. As soon as I was able to confirm this, it became obvious that we could work together, or “share know-how.”

If I could sum up the road to partnership in just one word, I would say: Meetings! Not singular, but plural. Because this is about several meetings that were conclusive and meaningful.

January 2005, at the World Social Forum
A first meeting with Ibrahim Farmo, of the Centre de formation des cadres en alphabétisation, in Niamey. We spent a lot of time discussing our practices. In spite of the occasional differences in terminology, we noticed that we’re speaking the same language, that we agree on many principles. I realized that we may not be in the same boat, but we’re rowing in the same direction.

November 2005, in Dakar
During the professional seminar organized by Uniterra, several players from the educational sector in the North and the South found themselves at the same table. A second determining meeting: Mor Diakhat? He organized on-site visits to help give us a better idea of what was being done. I immersed myself in what I was seeing and hearing. We got to the Gall?Nanondiral community centre in Yeumbeul. That’s where Mor introduced us to one of his team members, Fatoumata Soly. Another meeting! She explained the approach they use in the field: the Reflect Circles!

In that instant, a light bulb went off in my head. I was devouring his every word. I took notes. I had a million questions. I think my interest was evident, because two days later, they asked if I’d like to go into the field and meet the women of the Cercles Makhlarim Akhlaaki (excuse my accent, my Wolof accent is very strong). I found myself standing in a sandy courtyard in Keur Massar, just outside of Dakar. Yet another significant meeting: this one, with a group of some 30 women who were generous enough to teach me, directly through their actions, what REFLECT is. It’s an approach that joins alpha and action, alpha and communication, alpha and power.

I was enraptured. I was deeply convinced that this is an extremely valuable approach that might interest my colleagues in Quebec. And that’s where we got the idea for our North-South/South-North mission. Last fall, we had the opportunity to meet women in several Circles. Again: important, inspiring, enriching encounters.

And that’s why, as we welcome our Senegalese colleagues in our groups in Quebec, we hope that they, too, will be inspired by one of our methods. It’s up to them to find a gem of an idea, ‘made in Quebec’, that they will want to bring back home.

I’ll conclude by saying that all of these meetings gave me the ability to view my work here with new objectivity. I’ve been working for 17 years with a community literacy group in Montreal’s Centre-sud borough. To go on a mission, to talk about the work I do here, allowed me to situate my practice in a wider perspective. Generally, it is easy enough to see the differences between South and North. By building this bridge, what we discover is, in fact, that which brings us together!