CENTRAL AMERICA

 

Honduras Helped by ALBA

Tegucigalpa - The illiteracy campaign developed by Honduras will receive 10 million dollars by the financial support of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), said the local press Monday.

Honduran Education Minister Marlon Breve said the Venezuelan donation will allow to complete the necessary resources for the decisive battle to declare Honduras a free country of illiterate people in January 2010.

Breve said the funds are being gotten by the Honduran representation in Caracas, for their transfer to a special account in the Honduran Central Bank.

The first benefits started with the delivery of a little more than a million dollars last year.

Cuban experts are giving their contribution to this important process, with the supervision of the teaching of the Cuban method “Yo Si Puedo” created by Cuban specialists.

Eradication of illiteracy is one of the main legacies Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is thinking of leaving the country.

“We expect to achieve it in January 2010, an amount of 750,000 Hondurans cannot read or write but the process is going on quite fast”, said the Honduran minister.

In the last three years, 250,000 Hondurans learned to read and write, and this reduced the illiteracy rate down to 16 percent, from 18.5 percent.

Now the goal is to reduce another four percentage points, a rank demanded by UNESCO to declare a country as free of illiteracy, and there is a new project to increase the school level of the students with another course called “Yo Si Puedo Seguir”, with a duration of two or three years.