Testimonials

Putu Pratiwi : Bali

Putu Pratiwi was eleven-years old when she came to the attention of local tour group leaders. They found that despite a bright mind and dedication to studies, she was going to have to drop out of school after the 6th grade. Putu’s father was often unemployed, although he worked seasonally picking cloves. Her mother made cakes that she sold in the market.

The tour leaders found supporters to help Putu fund her education. With their help, Putu graduated from high school in June 2012. She ranked 9th in her class of 40 students. She excelled in mathematics and was passionate about dance, specializing in the difficult Legong. She was chosen to tour to Melbourne, Australia and later, Hong Kong as part of a performance group from her village.

However, Putu Pratiwi decided that the more practical option for her future was to go to a vocational school which prepares students to work in the hotel industry. Tourism is growing in the area where she lives, and there are high paying jobs in the tourism industry. With the tour leaders’ help, Putu applied for and was awarded an ACTL grant to fund her tuition for vocational school.

Luuale Lillian- Kenya

Luuale Lillian is from a small village in Kenya. She is from a family of six children. Luuale explained that they often had difficulty paying for basic needs. Her father was a farmer who had struggled to raise the funds to pay for Luuale’s secondary level schooling. Prior to her death, Dr. Jennifer Wilson, ACTL’s founder, approved Luuale’s first grant. ACTL was proud to support Luuale Lillian throughout her secondary school years.

Luuale always planned to reduce the level of poverty in her community by promoting education for girls and children. She explained that there was a shortage of qualified science teachers in her village. Lualle Lillian graduated with her Bachelor of Science in December 2015. She began teaching in a secondary school in the country and began nurturing girls to become responsible citizens.

ACTL has been able to continue to support Luuale as she pursues her Master’s degree in education which she began in January 2018. She continues to learn new information about current environmental problems and mathematics which she brings back to her classroom and to her students.

Kalkidan - Ethiopia

ACTL has sponsored Kalkidan for the last five years, from kindergarten through grade five in Addis, Ethiopia. She was one of our youngest recipients. Her father works as a bellman at night and in the information technology field during the day to provide for his wife and two daughters. Most of his money went to pay for his older daughter’s tuition, but Kalkidan qualified to attend a good school, and ACTL was proud to sponsor her. In the photo, she is holding her first assignment from kindergarten, and now as a fifth grader she tells us that her her favorite subject is technology, and her favorite book is Lejenet. She would like to be an inventor when she is older.

Patience - Kenya

ACTL sponsored Patience in 9th grade. She is the oldest of three siblings. Her father passed away in 2008 and her mother is ill and struggles to get her to school. Patience studied animal and environmental protections. She visited a primary school as part of a mentorship program where she taught students the importance of keeping a clean environment. On her holidays from school she also organized an estate clean up activity and planted over 100 trees which were donated by local farmers at her request. Patience is a student who loves learning and giving back to her community and family.

Barbara - Kenya

ACTL supported Barbara for three years as she finished medical school. Barbara is the eldest of four children. Her father died of AIDS in 2000, and her mother is the sole provider for the family. Barbara helped others and gave back throughout medical school. She conducted a Facebook Campaign Against A Dirty City and started a website that gave information to the public on dealing with sexually abused women. Barbara attended the global health care summit in Berlin before she began her last school year. There she focused on the plight of refugees on the European continent. She was able to witness firsthand the situation of the refugees in Germany and discuss the challenges and possible solutions to some of the problems that were emerging with the influx of asylum seekers. Barbara graduated in December 2015. She scored second highest in her class on her exams. After school Barbara was selected to join Tenwik Mission Hospital for her internship.

“I can never tire of emphasizing what a great deal A Chance Through Literacy played in my life, and I hope that soon I will be able to impact other people’s lives the way you did mine. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Dr. Barbara Odac

Lidiya - Ethiopia

Lidiya is a recipient from Ethiopia who we support along with her sister Meklit. Like all of our recipients she is very excited to have the opportunity that ACTL provides her. When Lidiya received her grant, she wrote to us, “This year for me was the beginning of a lifetime because it may be funny, but this year was the year that I finally grew up. I know myself, where I belongand where I am going. This year, I learned strength, honesty, fighting for what you want and also being hard-working. Now as you know, I am an 11th grade student, and I am a social studies student, and I will study law when I get to the university, and I know I will succeed. All you've got to do is to believe in yourself. That’s all. If you do that you can pass any obstacles in your life with passion and success. That’s all for me this year and I will try hard next year in 12th grade and get high results. Thank you for everything, God bless you a lot. From Lidiya”.

With the help of ACTL’s grant she was able to focus on her studies and pass her exams. She was accepted into University where she plans to focus on social studies and study law in order to help others.

Leyla - Turkey

ACTL is proudly partnered with PAYDA for Student Programs. One project PAYDA is working with is PSSP (Payda Supporting Students Project). The project supports girls in Southeast Turkey (near the Syrian border), and helps them deal with the challenges they face in attending school. The girls are aged seven to sixteen and come from very poor households where attending school is a luxury. Although they have dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, teachers, or politicians, the girls have many hurdles to overcome. The villages are vulnerable; terrorism is a constant concern, and family demands are great. PSSP is more than educational funding. Each girl is assigned a mentor who provides emotional support, educational advice, and helps find ways to alleviate some of the family pressures.

We fund the schooling for Leyla, a student who goes into areas ravaged by war in the Eastern Turkey/Syrian region for her education. One of the great benefits about being partnered with PAYDA is that they have people on the ground who can follow, interview, and check on these girls to make sure they are safe and progressing in their studies. A Chance Through Literacy is proud to be able to sponsor Leyla and help Payda continue their mission.

TANZANIA-365

In the fall of 2012 ACTL supported Marisa, a college graduate who planned a year-long service project. She created “Tanzania 365” where she would complete a year teaching through World Teach in a rural Secondary School in Tanzania. She picked this project because at the time the World Bank had published results that there was a teacher shortage of 85,000 leaving a lot of empty classrooms. In addition to teaching for a year, Marissa created Tanzania 365 to fundraise to bring school supplies, learning materials, and books to her classroom. In addition, she planned to collect children’s books to donate to local primary schools. Tanzania 365 aligns with ACTL’s mission, and we donated $100 towards her efforts of purchasing books and distributing them which she featured in her blog in 2013.

lDANVILLE COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL

ACTL was pleased to provide Danville Community High School with a grant to purchase books for the book club. The goals of the book club were to assist young adults in owning personal copies of books, regardless of their family income as over half the membership was on free or reduced lunch. The book club also wanted to encourage enjoyment and enthusiasm about stories that were relevant to their lives, to help foster language and literacy growth, and to expand their knowledge and cultural perspectives. In total the book club read six books. Each month the members would vote on a book to read, and they would hold “Donuts and Discussion” to have grand conversations. The students created a photo mosaic of all of their books and recorded a podcast about the individual favorites.

Over 100 books were distributed to the students throughout the school year. The goal of encouraging enjoyment and enthusiasm for books and book discussions were met as the membership doubled in size from October to February, beginning with 12 members and ending the year with 25. Although many of the books were shared with friends, it was a beginning of the youths’ personal home library.

LANSING ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL

Lansing Alternative School opened in 2013 for students who had been expelled or suspended from their district school. ACTL was pleased to provide Lansing Alternative school a grant to begin three book clubs with their students. The school’s Social Worker planned to have a Girls' Book Club and two Boys' Book Clubs to bring students together in book discussions and dialogue. The books she chose supported the students social and emotional learning with characters or situations with which the students could relate, allowing them to explore their own emotions and behavior. The book clubs wrote blogs about the books they read in the form of reviews, journal entries, artwork, or poems.

DEPARTMENT OF JUVENILE JUSTICE (DJJ) SOUTH CAROLINA

ACTL was proud to donate 220 middle-level and secondary books to the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) in Columbia, SC, in September 2015 and again in the summer of 2018. Nancy Montgomery, principal at DJJ, was elated with the donations and stated, “This is such a wonderful donation for our schools and statewide programs that work with the middle level and secondary students that we service. We are thrilled with all of these books!”

These texts are used in the main school at the detention center in Columbia, and in Evaluation Centers all over the state, as well as individualized programs offered to the students that they serve.

La Cubana School Library, Dominican Republic

Rebecca Eddy completed an internship with ACTL during her senior year at Newberry College in South Carolina. Her goal was to align a project with ACTL’s mission to provide educational opportunities to women and children in war-torn and poverty-stricken areas. Rebecca visited the Dominican Republic as part of a mission trip with her college. She visited a number of villages including La Cubana. The village has a public elementary school that hosts grades 1-6 with four teachers and 130 students. The school serves students from surrounding villages who walk several miles or ride donkeys to get to school. The students’ families come from impoverished communities and face many challenges in obtaining a quality education.

The director and teachers of the school determined that their greatest need was a school library since there is no public library in the area. Rebecca raised money to help La Cubana begin their library. She sold Krispy Kreme donuts, spoke at various functions at her college, and planned a Sonic Night to raise funds. At the end of the semester along with the money Rebecca raised ACTL was able to contribute funds to the library.

Diocesan Migrant Refugee Service (DMRS)

In the fall of 2019, A Chance Through Literacy was honored to support the work of the Diocesan Migrant Refugee Service (DMRS) in El Paso, Texas. The DMRS provides services to immigrants in West Texas and New Mexico, and we were especially interested in the work they did to support unaccompanied immigrant children detained in local ICE detention centers and shelters. These children were often fleeing poverty, war, and other dangerous circumstances, and in many cases, they had lost contact with an adult along the way. We learned that the DMRS was working with Border Patrol to deliver bi-lingual books to unaccompanied children in local detention centers, and we wanted to help. Knowing the importance of children being able to honor their home language and see themselves in the literature they read, the board supported a $1000 grant that made possible the purchase of bi-lingual K – 5 English/Spanish and Spanish language children’s books that featured Latino main characters. The books were sent to the DMRS who coordinated with Border Patrol to deliver them to children at local detention centers. Our sincere hope is that these books provided comfort to children who had been separated from family members and – at least briefly – gave them the opportunity to enjoy stories about children who may have had similar experiences and who shared their common language.

Senang Hati Foundation

ACTL sponsored Mindy, an English teacher, to work with the people at the SenangHati Foundation, located in Bali. Our founder, Jennifer, had visited SenangHati in the summer of 2011 and learned that the person who had been serving as their English teacher for several years had to leave. The Foundation had been without a teacher for over a year. When Jennifer returned to the States, she made contact with Mindy who, though an ACTL grant, was able to return to Bali and fill in. Mindy spent two months working with the people at the Foundation. They had a wide range of prior English experiences and ability levels. She taught Monday through Friday and conducted an advanced class twice a week for Foundation leaders.

ACTL was proud to provide two grants to the American School of Warsaw’s (ASW) Refugee Club. The Refugee Club, with student members from ASW, has had a relationship for over a decade with two local centers for refugees. The Centers are located in Linin and Debak, just outside Poland’s capital of Warsaw. The number of asylum seekers can vary from over 450 in Linin to around 250 in Debak. The students from the school provide weekly support to the children at the centers with English classes and other activities. The libraries at the Linin and DebakCenters had a limited number of worn books. One request of the refugees was to have more of their favorite literature, especially since books are heavy to carry, and families oftenhad to leave them behind when they fled their homes. With the support of ACTL, the Refugee Club set out to fulfill those wishes. The first year, the proposal was to purchase 45-50 books, but with club members’ careful planning the impact was doubled. In addition, many of the books the refugees requested for purchase were no longer available in print, and only electronic versions were available. The ASW Refugee Club purchased the electronic versions, printed them, bound them, and designed covers in order to offer these titles to the students who wanted them. In the second year, The Refugee Club continued to work weekly with the two centers, and with the support of ACTL, they added 100 books to the community libraries.

Sonlight Academy Port-de-Paix, Haiti

Sonlight Academy is an English immersion Christian school serving Haitian children from preschool through twelfth grade. Students study in English, French, and Creole and when they graduate, they are tri-lingual. When we received their application for help with the school library, Haiti was in the midst of a severe fuel crisis which had left the Haitian government in debt for millions of dollars for fuel. The effects of the debt rippled across the country and had an impact not only on transportation, communication, power, water, and food availability but especially on education.

The library at Sonlight Academy is the only English language library in their town of over 200,000. The school’s principal, Carmen, requested help in buying books for their library for her K - 12 students as there were no school funds to do so. She created a booklist of culturally relevant books, other books about Haiti and by Haitian authors and others that met the reading and interest levels of the students. ACTL was proud to contribute funds that would help build the library’s collection. Carmen wrote to us saying, “Our students are SO excited about the new books! We are thrilled to offer them more reading material and so grateful to all of you at A Chance through Literacy. I love that you are helping to change lives through literacy. We, at Sonlight, feel that education is what lifts people out of poverty and gives them a chance to succeed.”

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