I can tell you most times for me, doing that was very embarrassing because I was always neatly dressed and trying my best to look
good, so I could feel good about myself, and when that time came around and I started sweating and twitching, the people knew.
Then instead of looking good and feeling good, I felt like a dead dog. Most times I was lucky to find good people who were willing
to help me, but many times, na.
Then I went to a very big company to ask for a job. They gave me an application form to fill out at home and bring it back.
I took it home and had my son fill it out. I took it back and got the job. However, when I had to do the work that they gave me,
I started having problems because there were a lot of things I had to read and write. So because I didn't want to lose that job,
I decided that enough was enough! I decided that I must get educated because so much depended on it.
When I started as a student at Project Literacy, I didn't have a clue what the addition, subtraction, division or multiplication
signs in mathematics meant. In English, nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives were not part of the English language to me.
My intention in the beginning was just to learn to read and write so I could have a better life, however, because of the wonderful
people I met at the Project Literacy program, who gave me the most magnificent English teacher in the world, the very patient and
understanding Daniel Curcio; and the most wonderful math teacher in the world, who never gave up, the always persistent,
Carol Ferrara, my intentions changed to bigger things.
Because of the assurances they gave me by taking such good care of me, they made me realize that I was capable of passing the
GED Exams, so that I could go onto college and be the better person that I wanted to be, and have a life better than I was having
then. I can set an example to others like me by saying, "If I can do it, so can you." I passed the GED Exams last February.
Finally, let me tell you how I see the people involved in the Project Literacy program. I see them with their hands stretched
out far and wide just to grab and rescue people like me, who thought that they are like abandoned children in the center of a
jungle with no hope whatsoever. They are there to prove us wrong by doing for other students what they did for me, as simple as that.
