Literacy: path to power

BRAZIL: Indigenous people in the Amazonian state of Acre create simple but easily recognizable images to illustrate manuals used for literacy training

It’s one thing to give rights to native people; it’s another to provide them with education so that they can defend their own interests and guide their development.

Empowering indigenous people through literacy was the aim of a nongovernmental organization that carried out an education program in Brazil’s Amazonian state of Acre. The teaching materials were largely written and illustrated by community members.

The program was part of a ground-breaking IDB-financed initiative to protect the environment and the livelihoods of local people—indigenous as well as rubber tappers and colonists—in the wake of a road-building project. The program also included demarcation of indigenous territories, health services, and measures to boost agricultural production and improve marketing through the purchase of vehicles and motors for dugout canoes.

The Acre program was created in 1989 as a result of discussions between local groups and governmental agencies implemented to a great extent by nongovernmental organizations.