Cameroon: Fantastic Phonics donated, training team travels to Africa

Fantastic Phonics training team team traveled to Cameroon in Africa to be part of a literacy project initiated and funded by Nascent Solutions.

This is the beginning of a literacy solution by Nacents.org in partnership with Fantastic Phonics. Nascent has been working on establishing a baseline literacy level in North West Cameroon region, towards the Nigeria border.

The results of their survey revealed literacy levels for English to be 5%. Nascent Solutions already provides fresh food, by building vegetable gardens and schools, in partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture

The vegetables grown will provide food for the children when they return to school. There are many project schools dotted around the rural countryside and we were thrilled to visit some with the agricultural project manager.

She showed us with pride the schools and flourishing vegetable gardens. As we approached the classrooms even though it was school holidays, children and a teacher came to greet us and show us around.

The countryside was lush, steep mountains, with many areas cultivated with corn, bananas and beans, all in neat rows.

Fantastic Phonics trained 120 teachers in Kumbo, who are now scheduled to train other teachers how to use Fantastic Phonics with their chiildren's education. Phonics can be used in every class, and teachers can use Fantastic Phonic techniques with every subject, including numeracy.

The training went well, with many teachers expressing the need for Phonics training as they did have a full understanding of how English text created the sounds of English words. They found the training very helpful and essential to teach children how to read.

The training consisted of four groups of 30 teachers, for 2 days each group. Nascent Solutions did a marvelous job in arranging the travel, food, and accommodation for all the teachers and the Fantastic Phonics team.

The Kumbo district is one of two large precincts in Cameroon where English is widely spoken. Children learn a mix of English, French and local dialects, which complicates literacy efforts.

By using Fantastic Phonics, children learn with a system that achieved a 485% improvement in reading outcomes, and a 250% improvement in comprehension. The reading system combines print-based resources, as well as video, multimedia and 'apps', and quizzes and challenges to teach letter sounds, alphabet skills, word skills, vocabulary of core words, plus the developing skill of decoding the written taxt to become fluent readers.

The efficacy of the program was demonstrated in the 2010 Liberian EGRA project, which saw the Liberian government adopt Fantastic Phonics for all its schools.

were very attentive and worked hard to achieve success in their FP literacy training. The Kumbo region was surrounded by misty green mountains and was very beautiful.

On the last day of training a film crew arrived from Cameroon National T.V. They spent most of the day filming the training, also several teachers, and team members were interviewed.

Our experience training in Cameroon was amazing. The NASCENT.org team were wonderful, the teachers we trained were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the Fantastic Phonics training.

Fantastic Phonics will be distributed to all the teachers in 6 regions in this NASCENT project and thousands of children will benefit immediately. This is just the start, many more children will receive the program in the months ahead.

We give the reading program free of charge to the children of Cameroon to learn to read.