Reverend Alfreddie Johnson, Jr. is a much sought-after national speaker, community activist, founder of the World Literacy Crusade, and cofounder of the American Health and Education Clinics. In November 2005 he was elected a Lynwood City councilman and subsequently the Mayor Pro Tem.

Johnson is the pastor of True Faith Christian Church, a Baptist congregation in Compton, California. When community unrest erupted in greater Los Angeles in 1992, Johnson intensified his search for solutions to the underlying problems. He teamed up with Fred Shaw, Jr., veteran deputy sheriff, who introduced him to Applied Scholastics and the study technology of L. Ron Hubbard. Through the workable study method the clergyman saw that the primary and most overlooked barrier to learning anything was the misunderstood word. Johnson saw clearly that the social ills of poverty, ignorance, drug abuse, criminality, and gangs were not the real cause of his people’s hopelessness and anger.  Illiteracy was!

As founder of the World Literacy Crusade, and joined by his national spokesperson Isaac Hayes, Johnson continues to expand his fight to eradicate illiteracy.

He continues to address the broader needs of the community. In 2003 Johnson founded Men Who Care, a campaign to highlight positive role models in the community. The following year Johnson helped open American Health and Education Clinics, a facility that boasts a 76% success rate in treating youth and adults with substance abuse issues.

Johnson’s speaking engagements have included the State of the African American Male Initiative Conference in Los Angeles, the Dr. Lonnie E. Mitchell National HBCU Substance Abuse Conference and a Hip-Hop Summit Action Network conference. He is a frequent guest on national radio on topics ranging from the African American condition to Hip-Hop to illiteracy to drug prevention.

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A dynamic leader noted for her passion in addressing issues of concern to the community, Dr. Hanan Islam has devoted her life to bringing real solutions to the lives of L.A. area residents in health and education. Her many hats include head of an international literacy program, as well as executive director of a drug rehabilitation and mental health clinic and the founder of a new foundation dedicated to increasing funding to deserving non-profits and churches nationally.

As executive director of the Compton-based World Literacy Crusade, Dr. Hanan Islam oversees a network of 27 affiliates of the popular literacy program in five countries. Under her stewardship, World Literacy Crusade has increased its annual income by 300 percent, received contracts with state and county agencies for delivery of services, and opened a new site in India.

Dr. Islam is co-founder of the American Health and Education Clinics, a certified drug and alcohol treatment and alternative mental heath facility.

She is the founder of Community Empowerment Foundation, a national organization that teaches individuals, non-profits, churches and families in low-income communities how to create  intergenerational wealth. The organization educates people on how to set up family trusts and endowment funds to ensure that accumulated wealth is passed on to their heirs and members of their agencies.

She serves as board chair for the Nina M. Kraft Youth Empowerment Program and as secretary for the NAACP Compton Branch. She is an executive council member of Men Who Care, a group promoting positive role models to inner city youth. Islam is an advisory board member of the Compton–Watts Interfaith Council and a board member of the African American Mental Health Coalition. Islam also mentors high-risk girls in her area. She was the founder of the Avalon/El Segundo Primary Care Physicians Medical Group.

Islam is a naturopathic doctor, having received doctorates in naturopathic medicine from the Eden Institute and Rochville University. She earned a master’s degree in social work from Rochville University. In 2004 she became a registered addiction specialist, through Breining Institute.

In her spare time she managed to act as campaign manager and strategist for Rev. Alfreddie Johnson’s successful bid for city council in the City of Lynwood in November 2005.

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You may know Isaac Hayes as an Oscar and Grammy Award winning musician-composer, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, radio host or television and movie actor, but World Literacy Crusade knows him as a friend and humanitarian – and its international spokesperson. Throughout the years Isaac Hayes has used his inimitable voice to champion literacy efforts and other social betterment causes around the globe.

In addition to his ardent support of the World Literacy Crusade, Hayes devotes much of his time to charitable causes through the Isaac Hayes Foundation (IHF), founded in May 1999, to support global causes that serve community needs in health care, economic, community, environmental and human development. The group has participated in celebrity benefit concerts, like Jam For Literacy at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles, Literacy Links 2000, a middle school program in Memphis, and the Crusaders, a volunteer team of exhibition basketball players from around the country who put on benefit shows for a variety of causes.

He and Lisa Marie Presley, a lifelong friend and fellow Scientologist, established a mission for the organization in their hometown of Memphis. There they started a Learning Education Ability Program (Leap Program) Center, an after school program that teaches Memphis youth how to read, write and study.

In 1992, Hayes was appointed Honorary King for Development of the Ada Tradition area in Ghana in Western Africa. There, his official name is Nene (King) Katey Ocansey I, and he is charged with improving literacy as well as spurring industrial and economic growth. In the summer of 2000, Hayes opened a school in Ghana designed to link children in Africa with those in American inner cities via the Internet. The 8,000 square foot facility, called NekoTech, not only delivers general and health education and computer technology, it also houses an affiliate of the World Literacy Crusade.