At the end of 1993, when we were founded, the Educational Testing Service published results from a four-year survey showing that 23% of adults in the United States, over 44 million people, were illiterate. Another 50 million, 26.2% of the adult population, were at the second-lowest level of literacy. More recent studies show no improvement, and these alarming statistics are paralleled around the world. This global dilemma goes far beyond why Johnny can’t read, to how to deal with a world gone mad: increasing violence, drug abuse, despair and the inability to confront and solve the problems one faces in daily life because one is uneducated. Ignorance permeates our world and we have embraced it, yet it is more dangerous and deadly than atomic weapons and plagues. For every one African-American male graduating from college there are one hundred in jails and prisons across the country. Although this problem is not specific to race there are a disproportionate number of our citizens who are illiterate in the inner cities of this country and worldwide.

The goal of the World Literacy Crusade is the elimination of poverty, disease, crime and hopelessness. We do not see man as an animal who must adapt to his environment, but as a spiritual being who has been granted potential power over the things and circumstances in the physical universe. Just as man must feed his body with water, oxygen and food for his physical survival, he must also be able to fuel his spiritual survival with ideas, concepts and information to help him master the universe and attain optimum eternal life. This information comes in the form of words.

While our movement has participants from all faiths, I am a Christian minister and take the liberty of using a reference from the Bible, which says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” This statement tells us that the spirit of God is bound up in words. In order to embrace God’s spirit, one must get the full conceptual understanding of each and every word he or she encounters.

In 1992, at the home of community leaders Fred and Marcine Shaw, I was introduced to a breakthrough Study Technology developed by American author and humanitarian, L. Ron Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard had isolated the exact reasons that block a person from learning, and he developed precise steps to allow anyone to overcome these barriers.

Using Study Technology, the World Literacy Crusade is providing the missing ingredient in today’s educational institutions; we are teaching people how to learn. Once one understands the barriers to study and how to overcome them, he or she is empowered in ways one has never known before. The person can now learn any subject, has the tools to improve any area of life and can realize his or her own dreams.

After years of sitting across the table from young people teaching them to learn, we found that drugs and alcohol were permeating the community at younger and younger ages and decided to address the drug issue directly. It is impossible to teach anyone anything if they have mind-altering drugs, whether street or pharmaceutical in nature, in their system. The detoxification of, education about and treatment for the abuse of these drugs, as well as drug-free mental health services, were added to our curriculum in May 2004 when we opened the American Health and Education Clinics.

Currently there are World Literacy Crusade programs across the United States and in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Britain, Ghana, India and Canada. These programs are helping young people and adults to become literate and lead productive lives.

We ask for your financial support, your time to tutor, your help in opening a literacy center in your area and your help in spreading the word. With your assistance more and more people will have personal hope for the future.

Will you help?