NAME Newsletter

NAME Newsletter is published by the National Association for Mass Education, an organization which promotes literacy and adult education in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

For further information about NAME or to request copies of the Newsletter write to:

Leon Romeo and Rebecca Jordan
Coeditors, NAME Newsletter
P.O. Box 304
Kingston, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

We reproduce here the cover [opposite] and excerpts from the text of Issue No.2 (January-March 1988), the theme for which is Women and Adult Education.

Mass Education: An Antidote for Violence

Violence in our society has reached cancerous proportions. It manifests itself through the violence of unemployment, lack of educational opportunities and physical and sexual violence against women.

As a traditionally dominated group, women feel the effects of violence in the home, at the workplace and through the various forms of sexual abuse which have extended to rape and murder of children.

At the same time, men, who are unfortunately the major users of violence, are themselves victims of their own violence and of he traditional expectations of them as men. Society, like a fish rapped by an octopus, is caught in the tentacles of the cancer of violence.

It was against such a background of violence that the first international Women's Day came into being. On March 8, 1908 women workers in New York, USA held a rally to demand trade union rights which would ensure fair wages and safe working conditions. The success of the rally encouraged women in other American cities and other countries to organize for their rights.

In 1910, March 8, was officially celebrated as International Women's Day.

Today, 78 years later, there is a greater need to rally around the issues facing women, It is not enough to speak; it is time for action! An Education program is needed:

  1. for women to become aware of themselves and their worth, develop their self-esteem and skills, and to articulate their needs;

  2. for men to understand the humanity of women, their needs, their right to freedom, to pay them honour as the weaker vessel or dominated group, and to raise them from that position.

The good news is that NAME is well-placed to carry out this task, NAME believes that “...education should seek to enhance self-esteem, to develop one's potential, to equip the individual with the skills necessary to function in, analyze and change society" (Constitutional Guidelines). It is structuring its activities to fulfill these aims.

Mass education is the antidote to the spread of violence as men and women work together in an atmosphere of equality to build bridges for women's total liberation.

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