Pam has a new article up on the Huffington post speaking about the powerful link between literacy and human connection. Read the full article here.
"Lately, I've been thinking a lot about company. The children in our LitWorld programs are often very lonely at the end of the school day. They will linger at the community center rather than have to go home to an empty apartment. The children in Kibera, Kenya, walk long and very treacherous distances to get from school to home, through winding alleys, often in a cold darkness.
I have been thinking about what we can share with children that will make their journeys less lonely.
I believe that literacy is all about this idea of accompaniment. It's about raising our voices, sharing our stories, communicating our ideas and hopes and dreams and learning about other worlds, exploring the imaginations of our fellow authors together. Literacy allows the child walking the lonely path or the woman facing a new story of HIV or the father waiting in the clinic for his IV can hear the power, the deep and stirring power of not being alone."