Tour on Cuba’s literacy campaign

By Cindy Domingo, Cuba and Bolivarian Alliance Issues Committee

The Cuba and Bolivarian Alliance Issues Committee is proud to cosponsor the national tour of Luisa Campos Gallardo, director of the National Literacy Museum in Havana since 1996.  The Museum is associated with Havana’s University of Pedagogical Sciences.  Ms Campos will be visiting the US in April/May 2016 and possibly June, depending on interest. We invite branches to bring Ms. Campos to visit their city or to sponsor events in the cities already included in the tour.

In 1960, Fidel Castro announced in a United Nations speech that Cuba would eradicate illiteracy in one year’s time.  In 1961 the National Cuban Literacy Campaign was launched and in that year, that promise was fulfilled.  The campaign called on the Cuban people to volunteer to participate in this campaign, many of them young girls and women.  In that one year, literacy rose to 96%.  Today, Cuba’s literacy rate is 99.8% The National Literacy Museum documents the history of the campaign as well as ongoing international efforts to eradicate illiteracy through the Yo Si Puedo Program. 

Please contact Cindy Domingo at cindydomingo@gmail. If you are interested.  For more information on Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign in 1961, please see www.maestrathefilm.org

This film could be used in conjunction with Ms. Campos’ tour.

Ms Campos holds a masters in educación and has 48 years of experience as a university professor, largely teaching at the José Enrique Varona Pedagogical University. She has taught at an undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level, as well as teaching special courses in the areas of Cuban history, ethics, José Martí, adult education, literacy (in various issues within literacy studies), and with The Yo Si Puedo program.  She taught Yo Si Puedo methodological seminars in Cuba and abroad, training teachers who will run and advise, the program in different countries. 

She was an on-site Yo Si Puedo adviser for two years in the states of Nayarit and Guerrero, Mexico, where she received awards and was included in a book published in that country.

In April 2013, she lectured at four US universities in Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee, and has received numerous awards and decorations from national institutions in Cuba.  Ms. Campos is coming to the US, in part, at the invitation of Pennsylvania State in University Park to present at an Adult Literacy Conference organized by Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy.

Pending the granting of her US visa, she may come a bit early and stay longer. If you are interested in hosting her to your city and/or university, and can commit to coordinate logistics and finances, please let us know.

Each city would have to purchase Luisa’s airfare from the previous city, and guarantee her food, lodging, local transportation, a respectable per diem and/or honorarium.

Current itinerary for Luisa Campos
April 19 (approximate) Fly HAV-MIA (Tentative depending on invitations)
April 21 - 23 University of New Mexico - Albuquerque, NM
April 24 - 26 Penn State Behrend - Erie, PA
April 27 - 29 (or 30) Event at Penn State at Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy - University Park, PA

Possible itinerary after PA
May 2 - 5 University of Memphis
5 - 10 Minneapolis-St. Paul
10 - 13 Bloomington, IN
13 - 20 Baltimore/DC
20 - 26 OPEN
May 26 - June 2 New York City (Hosts: various - LASA underway - parallel events with the US Women and Cuba Collaboration & other Cuba organizations)

JUNE IS WIDE OPEN and can stay as long her visa allows 

Return to Havana, depending on additional invitations, pending valid length of US visa

PHOTO: Luisa Campos shows equipment used in the Literacy Campaign. Credit: Bob Fitrakis