More than 300 million of India's people are illiterate. In India's slums and rural villages the percentage of illiterates is often two-thirds, and it is not unusual to find places where only a handful of men, and no women, are able to read and write. Illiteracy destroys the hopes and dreams of so many Indian people.

People in rural areas and slums, where literacy is the lowest, live with severe problems that come from their inability to read, write, or handle simple mathematical calculations. Literacy gives these people new self-confidence and opens doors for better jobs, better standards of living and responsible citizenship.

Mission India has developed an effective literacy programme that transforms students in many of these ways.

The programme is a 12-month literacy course designed for those who cannot read, and students have to commit to group study sessions five nights a week, for 2-hours each night. This course is now available in 17 languages and can be effectively taught by instructors who themselves have little formal education. Approximately 85% of the students reach the reading standard of a 10 year old.

Components of Mission India's literacy programme include: full  training for the course leader and teaching manuals; a kerosene lantern (most classes are conducted at night); a class chalkboard; three textbooks for each student, slates and chalk; two Scripture books, and a post-literacy module focusing on employment issues and income-generating projects.

Students receive coaching in the formation of self-help groups, savings clubs and prayer groups.

A literacy class impacts a student in so many ways:

• New self-confidence and dignity
• Ability to resist abuse or cheating
• Understanding savings and investment
• Understanding measurements of volume, weight and length
• Formation of 'self help' cooperatives
• Personally signing legal forms and official papers
• Ability to travel (reading street signs and bus timetables)
• Navigate through office buildings
• Calculate fares and distances
• Ability to tell time on different kinds of clocks
• Development of family "income-generating" enterprises
• Ability to read government health pamphlets
• Improvement of personal hygiene
• Resisting alcoholism and substance abuse
• Encouraging school attendance for children
• Resisting abusive child labour and bonded slavery
• Promoting community sanitation/health issues
• Spiritual issues:
• Discussions about God's love and the cross
• Reading Bible passages
• Emphasising service to others

                                         ...and much, much more!