Farmer Karl
Literacy training for adults on the countryside

In Mellendorf, a village about 30 kilometres away of the city of Hannover, we tried to offer a course especially for people living outside the urban area and who do not have easy access to basic education offers, for example due to lack of transportation, or for other reasons.

The first attempt was to contact especially elderly people of rural cultural background who due to their working biographies in - for example - agriculture have not really been practicing their reading and writing skills througout life and now would like to make good for it with the help of professional adult literacy teachers in a convenient and trustful environment next to their places of residence. With the help of the local community centre we were even able to provide call-in transport for those living outside the village

However, this attempt turned out to be ineffective. Despite various attempts to make the offer public, and to get access to people in need through local intermediaries, we did not really get into contact with potential learners.

However, since what we offered was set up as as an open workshop where everybody could come to work on topics of their interest (the workshop staff would provide all possible materials, often especially prepared for the learners on the individual level), and we continued opening he workshop each Thursday in the evening, our workshop was soon discovered by a couple of refugee families from countries of the Middle East now accommodated in the rural environment unfamiliar to them. These people turned out to be extremely grateful for the possibility to get once a week into contact with the supporting learing environment we provided, without them being required to travel as far as Hannover city centre. 

This pilot course is an example to prove that, even when inital plans do not always work, still with consistency, flexibility, and readiness to react to concrete needs something useful can be achieved. 

Watch our 5 minutes video documentary on this innovative course. 

The video is availabe in several European languages.

Select video from table here!